The State of Women in the Pennsylvania Workforce 2008

Over the last three decades of mostly bad news for the Pennsylvania middle class, one bright spot has been the economic progress of women. This progress is illustrated by the slicing in half of the so-called gender wage gap: while typical Pennsylvania women workers earned only 61 cents at the end of the 1970s for every dollar earned by typical Pennsylvania men, they now earn almost 80 cents.

In the current decade, however, during the expansion from 2001-2007, the economic progress of women in the Pennsylvania workforce stopped.

The lack of progress for women is not a result of the factor most often used to explain why some workers earn more than others: education. In fact, working-age women in Pennsylvania are now more educated than men.

In Pennsylvania and nationally, the often second-class status of women in the job market partly reflects the large number of women concentrated in the “wrong” jobs. Large numbers of women work in low-wage service jobs. These jobs are poorly paid neither because they are less skilled than all jobs that pay better nor because the work performed in them is unimportant. For example, many of the women in these jobs care for our pre-school children, vulnerable seniors, and people with physical and developmental disabilities; serve us in stores and restaurants; clean our hotel rooms and commercial buildings; and keep our offices running smoothly.

Every year beginning in 1996, Keystone Research Center has published The State of Working Pennsylvania. The present report, a companion to The State of Working Pennsylvania 2008, contains KRC’s first-ever comprehensive look at the position of women in the Pennsylvania workforce. Based on official government statistics on wages, income, poverty, educational attainment, and occupational employment patterns,

The State of Women in the Pennsylvania Workforce 2008 traces the economic status of working women in the commonwealth since 1979, in absolute terms and compared to men. The latter part of the report also
describes two indices that can be used to measure the economic position of women in 40 regions across the commonwealth.