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July 23, 1997
Female baby boomers make wage gains but other women's earnings stagnate
Ottawa – A report released today by the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) shows that increases in women's earnings over the past decade have been enjoyed mainly by the baby boom generation, while women of other age groups have seen their earnings stagnate. And employed men, other than those in the youngest age group, have not experienced any decline in their earnings position.
Using an innovative research method of analysing women's earnings in relation to the entire distribution of earnings, CCSD researchers Katherine Scott and Clarence Lochhead found that more Canadian workers with full-time, full-year jobs had annual earnings above $37,000 in 1994 compared to 1984, thanks mainly to the number and proportion of women moving into this category from the lower earnings groups. However, the gender-based wage gap remained substantial in 1995, with women earning 65 cents for every dollar earned by men, up from 54 cents in 1981. For full-time full-year workers, the wage gap narrowed from 64 cents to 73 cents for every man's dollar.
"Based on our findings, suggestions that the labour market is approaching a state of gender parity are clearly premature," say Scott and Lochhead, authors of Are women catching up in the earnings race?, Social Research Report No. 3 in a CCSD series focusing on the changing labour market. This research series is supported by Human Resources Development Canada.
The researchers found that female baby boomers had made some headway – moving from 11.5 per cent of all those earning more than $51,000 a year in 1984 (the highest earnings decile of the population), to 17 per cent by 1994. And high-income earning men held their ground – 1.3 million of them were in the top decile in 1994, compared to 275,000 women in this category. For the youngest group of women and men (18- to 24-year-olds) working full time for the whole year, the situation was bleak. Neither sex experienced any increase in their earnings over the decade. In fact, more young men fell into the lowest earning group ($24,000 a year or less) in 1994 than in 1984, and 72 per cent of young women remained at this earnings level.
"The gains made over the decade by women are not necessarily secure. The trend in young women's and men's earnings is worrisome. And many of the women who saw improvements in their earnings did so because they found good jobs in the health, education and social service sectors. But as our economy changes and those sectors continue to downsize, there is a real danger that women's economic advances will be halted," say Scott and Lochhead.
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Canadian Council on Social Development,
309 Cooper Street, 5th Floor,
Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 0G5
Tel: (613) 236-8977, Fax: (613) 236-2750, Web: www.ccsd.ca, Email: council@ccsd.ca
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