Why the Gender Pay Gap is Widening.

For Marketplace in Los Angeles, I'm Nova Safo in for David Brancaccio.

The Gender Pay Gap widened last year for the first time in 20 years, according to new data from the Census Bureau.

adjusted for inflation, men working full time saw their wages go up 3 percent,

while women in similar positions saw their wages go up 1.5 percent.

Marketplace as Samantha Fields has more.

The Gender Pay Gap has been narrowing, slowly, for the last 40 years.

This is the first time it's widened in a statistically

significant way since 2003. Sarah E. Step at the Center for American Progress

says even though wages grew for both men and women last year? This growth hasn't been equally

shared across demographic groups especially for women, especially for women of

color, who tend to work in lower paying jobs.

Women are more likely than men to work in health care and education.

Both fields E-Step says, where wages haven't grown all that quickly.

In comparison?

We saw a ton of wage growth in manufacturing, for example, and where did those jobs go to?

They primarily went to men.

Economists call this occupational segregation.

Heidi Sheerholz at the Economic Policy Institute says there's less of it than there used to be,

but it's still a big factor in the gender pay gap.

Similarly, women shoulder disproportionate responsibility for caregiving in our society that is changing but it is still the truth.

And she says given the lack of affordable child care, paid leave, and paid sick time,

...