Minneapolis – New research from smarter job search engine Adzuna reveals that the gender pay gap continues to widen, doubling to 6.0% in April 2024 from 2.9% in April 2022, despite ongoing efforts by US businesses to promote workplace equality (Table 1). The disparities are particularly prevalent among STEM fields – for example, women in science earned 13.1% less than their male counterparts.
To empower jobseekers and employers to identify potential gender pay gaps and make more informed decisions, Adzuna is today announcing a powerful new addition to its free AI-powered resume screening tool ValueMyResume. Jobseekers can now check the gender pay gap of their job, as well as obtain an estimate of their market value based on their resume, tips to enhance their resume, and advice on their next career move.
Drawing on a dataset of over a million resumes in the US, the research reveals that Science and Engineering sectors have the widest gender pay gaps (Table 2). In March 2024, the gender pay gap in Science was recorded at 13.1%, while Engineering reported a gap of 9.5% – meaning that females in science and engineering typically earned 87 cents and 90 cents respectively, for every dollar earned by males. While Engineering recorded a slim improvement in narrowing the gender pay gap by 0.9 pp compared to March 2022, the gender pay gap in Science widened significantly, up from 7.7% in 2022 to 13.1% in 2024. Meanwhile, women in IT earned 7% less than their male colleagues in March 2024, up five percentage points compared to the previous year of 2.3%. These figures reveal persistent challenges in closing the gender pay gap and achieving fair pay for women in STEM, likely driven by ingrained gender biases and structural barriers that perpetuate occupational segregation.
Breaking Barriers: Sectors Leading in Gender Pay Parity
While the gender pay gap favors men in most sectors, Accounting is the only sector where women out-earn their male counterparts (Table 3). In March 2024, women in accounting earned $1.04 for every dollar earned by men. Interestingly, a closer look reveals that the gender pay gap here has narrowed significantly compared to March 2022 (-11.4%), suggesting tremendous progress towards gender pay equity. Another sector to highlight is Banking and Finance. The gender pay gap here reduced to 1.4% in March 2024 from 3% in March 2022. Women in banking and finance earned 99 cents for every dollar earned by men.
A Growing Disparity Beyond STEM
Alarmingly, outside of STEM, several sectors have experienced a significant widening of the gender pay gap over the past two years (Table 4). The Legal sector has seen its gender pay gap widen by 11 percentage points. In both March 2022 and March 2023, the gap tipped in favor of women as they earned $1.05 for every dollar earned by men. However, the trend was reversed this March, with the gap increasing to 5.7% from -4.7% in March 2022. Women in law now earned 94 cents for every dollar earned by men. Similarly, the Marketing sector has experienced a dramatic turnaround in just two years. In March 2022, women in Marketing held a small advantage of 1.7%, but by March 2024, women lost significant ground, with men in marketing earning a substantial 7% more than women on average.
“Our latest data has revealed that the gender pay gap in the US widened in March 2024, reaching its highest level since coming out of the pandemic. Despite ongoing endeavors to enhance female participation and representation within STEM fields, the scales remain overwhelmingly tilted in favor of men, with women in science still earning a staggering 13% less than their male counterparts on average. Our data underscores a pressing need for better efforts to advance gender parity in the workplace,” says James Neave, Head of Data Science at job search engine Adzuna.
“On a positive note, it’s uplifting to see tremendous strides among the Accounting and Banking & Finance sectors, where the gender pay gap has been narrowed to nearing insignificance. Additionally, we’ve seen notable progress within the Human Resources and Customer Service fields. The narrowing of these gaps highlights the importance and success of employers fostering fair and equitable compensation practices across all industries.”
Table 1: Gender Pay Gap in the US, 2022 – 2024
| Month | Gender pay gap | What female typically earns for every dollar earned by male |
| Jan 2022 | 2.7% | 0.97 |
| Feb 2022 | 4.5% | 0.96 |
| Mar 2022 | 4.4% | 0.96 |
| Apr 2022 | 2.9% | 0.97 |
| May 2022 | 5.7% | 0.94 |
| Jun 2022 | 4.9% | 0.95 |
| Jul 2022 | 3.5% | 0.96 |
| Aug 2022 | 2.5% | 0.98 |
| Sep 2022 | 4.3% | 0.96 |
| Oct 2022 | 2.6% | 0.97 |
| Nov 2022 | 4.3% | 0.96 |
| Dec 2022 | 2.8% | 0.97 |
| Jan 2023 | 4.1% | 0.96 |
| Feb 2023 | 4.1% | 0.96 |
| Mar 2023 | 3.8% | 0.96 |
| Apr 2023 | 3.5% | 0.96 |
| May 2023 | 4.0% | 0.96 |
| Jun 2023 | 5.1% | 0.95 |
| Jul 2023 | 3.9% | 0.96 |
| Aug 2023 | 5.2% | 0.95 |
| Sep 2023 | 4.1% | 0.96 |
| Oct 2023 | 5.0% | 0.95 |
| Nov 2023 | 5.0% | 0.95 |
| Dec 2023 | 5.1% | 0.95 |
| Jan 2024 | 5.0% | 0.95 |
| Feb 2024 | 5.4% | 0.95 |
| Mar 2024 | 6.1% | 0.94 |
| Apr 2024 | 6.0% | 0.94 |
Table 2: Sectors With the Widest Gender Pay Gap, March 2024
| Sector | Gender pay gap,
March 2024 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
Gender pay gap,
March 2023 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
Gender pay gap,
March 2022 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
| Science | 13.1% ($0.87) | 13.0% ($0.87) | 7.7% ($0.92) |
| Engineering | 9.5% ($0.90) | 8.9% ($0.91) | 10.5% ($0.90) |
| Fashion & Arts | 9.0% ($0.91) | 4.9% ($0.95) | N/A |
| Media | 7.9% ($0.92) | 2.8% ($0.97) | 11.4% ($0.89) |
| Caretaking & Cleaning | 7.6% ($0.92) | 9.4% ($0.91) | 6.3% ($0.94) |
| IT | 7.0% ($0.93) | 2.3% ($0.98) | 7.7% ($0.92) |
| Marketing | 7.0% ($0.93) | 3.0% ($0.97) | -1.7% ($1.02) |
*Full sector breakdown available upon request.
Table 3: Sectors With the Narrowest Gender Pay Gap, March 2024
| Sector | Gender pay gap,
March 2024 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
Gender pay gap,
March 2023 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
Gender pay gap,
March 2022 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
| Accounting | -3.6% ($1.04) | -2.8% ($1.03) | -11.4% ($1.11) |
| Banking and Finance | 1.4% ($0.99) | 9.4% ($0.91) | 3.0% ($0.97) |
| Property | 1.9% ($0.98) | 3.9%($0.96) | N/A |
| HR | 2.9% ($0.97) | 3.7% ($0.96) | 5.4% ($0.95) |
| Customer Service | 2.9% ($0.97) | 3.9% ($0.96) | 1.5% ($0.98) |
*Full sector breakdown available upon request.
Table 4: Sectors With Widening Gender Pay Gap, 2022 vs 2024
| Sector | Gender pay gap,
March 2024 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
Gender pay gap,
March 2023 (What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
Gender pay gap,
March 2022(What women typically earn for every dollar earned by men) |
Change 2022 vs 2024 (percentage point) |
| Legal | 5.7% ($0.94) | -5.0% ($1.05) | -4.7% ($1.05) | 10.4 |
| Marketing | 7.0% ($0.93) | 3.0% ($0.97) | -1.7% ($1.02) | 8.8 |
| Science | 13.1% ($0.87) | 13.0% ($0.87) | 7.7% ($0.92) | 5.5 |
| Social Services | 3.9% ($0.96) | 0.1% ($1.00) | -1.0% ($1.01) | 4.9 |
| Sports | 3.9% ($0.96) | 0.5% ($1.00) | 0.1% ($1.00) | 3.8 |
*Full sector breakdown available upon request.
Methodology:
Adzuna defines the gender pay gap as the gap between the mean annual earnings, excluding overtime, of men and women. We trained an AI-powered machine learning model on more than 1 million resumes with known salary information. Our model shows that gender, adjusted for factors like experience, education and skills, is a significant variable influencing wages. The resumes span a diverse range of sectors and encompass both male and female jobseekers. The model extracts and analyzes information from resumes submitted to ValueMyResume, such as skills, work experience and education history, to statistically project estimated salaries for male and female candidates based on the patterns it deciphered from the training data. For this research, we applied the machine learning model to newly uploaded resumes between January 2020 and April 2024 to calculate the average difference in earning estimates between male and female jobseekers according to the model.
About ValueMyResume:
Starting the job-hunting process can be overwhelming and people are often lost as to where to begin. Adzuna provides a unique service called ‘ValueMyResume’, a free tool that uses cutting-edge AI tech to calculate how much you’re worth based on your resume and whether you are affected by the gender pay gap. As well as analyzing users’ value to employers, the service automatically suggests improvements to resumes, suggests career paths based on previous experience and matches you to relevant jobs. It’s an effortless way to start the job hunting process and arms its users with fundamentally useful data about their worth in the job market and their best job vacancy prospects. The tool was originally launched in 2015 in the UK as ValueMyCV, and relaunched in 3 international markets including the US with new innovative features in September 2017.
ValueMyResume’s new function: Gender pay gap
About Adzuna:
Adzuna is a smarter, more transparent job search engine. We help tens of millions of US jobseekers access more than eight million US jobs each month, so they can cut through the noise, zero in on the right role faster and land the right job.
Adzuna gives job seekers access to every available online job listing in a single site — without giving anyone else access to their personal data — and our unique tools and salary stats help jobseekers pinpoint the perfect role so they can earn what they’re actually worth. We love using the power of our technology to match people to better, more fulfilling jobs and keep Americans working.
Founded in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, Adzuna is a privately held company backed by Index Ventures, LocalGlobe and Smedvig Capital. In 2022, Adzuna acquired enterprise job search engine Getwork. Follow Adzuna on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn or learn more at https://www.adzuna.com.
