Female employees of the Trump White House, and the administration as a whole, are earning nearly 37 percent less than male employees, according to a report conducted by a conservative think tank and released yesterday.
The story filled yesterday’s 4 p.m. slot for Trump-related outrage.
The analyst repeated a typical Trump complaint that the media had erred in their reporting — but this time to progressives’ favor: They had underestimated the pay gap by nearly 50 percent.
Previous media reports put the pay gap at 20 percent.
Every July 1, the White House is required to submit a salary report to Congress. Mark Perry, an economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, evaluated this year’s report and found that female staffers are paid $84,676 on average, while men make $105,373 — a difference of nearly 37 percent.
“Of the top 101 highest-paid employees at the White House, nearly three out of four (73.3 percent) are men, and that percentage holds pretty closely for the top 23 (74 percent male), top 48 (77 percent male) and top 60 highest-paid staffers (73 percent). In contrast, of the 102 lowest-paid White House employees, nearly six out of ten (59.2 percent) are female,” he wrote.
An April report by the Pew Research Center found that women make, at median, an average of 79 cents on the dollar earned by men in jobs across America. The Trump administration pays 72 cents on the dollar.
The existence of a pay gap is controversial. Some claim it’s due to women generally choosing lower-paying work and taking breaks from the workforce to raise families.
Perry seemed to embrace this view but nevertheless had harsh words for the Trump White House and first daughter Ivanka, who has been a vocal proponent of equal pay and the recent Equal Pay Day: “If you are going to promote the statistical falsehood behind Equal Pay Day — that gender discrimination is the main explanatory factor for any aggregate, unadjusted gender differences in earnings — then you might want to investigate the whopping 37 percent (and $42,350) gender pay gap at your father’s White House,” he wrote.
