Men got slightly richer, women did not. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. The Census Bureau

finds the gap between what women earned and what men earned in 2024 widened for the second

year in a row. Typical wages for men increased 3.7 percent but stayed flat for women. Marketplaces

Savannah Peters reports.

There are lots of ways to measure the difference between what men and women earn,

says Elise Gould with the Economic Policy Institute. You can compare hourly wages or annual salaries,

control for factors like education and zip code or not. And they're all correct. They may be telling a slightly different story.

But Gould says the data consistently show a wide and stubborn gap, including the Census Bureau's

comparison of total earnings by year-round full-time workers.

As of 2024, full-time women are paid only 80.9% of what full-time men are paid.

The second annual decrease in a row.

I mean, it's obviously depressing to see.

Betsy Stevenson at the University of Michigan says one factor behind that

backslide could be returned to office policies, causing working mothers

to accept lower-paying jobs in exchange for flexibility. The latest iteration of a well-worn family

dynamic that drives the gender pay gap. We end up in this really difficult spiral where women

are paid less than men, so it makes sense for them to be the one to leave

work early to pick the kid up from daycare.

Stevenson says access to affordable child care and flexible workplace policies for all

parents would help narrow the gap. I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace.

Meanwhile, yesterday, the wealth gap between two men stood at zero.

When stock in the cloud computing and database company Oracle soared yesterday morning,

...