Equal Pay Day falls on March 26 this year, marking how far into 2026 women must work to match what men earned in 2025. The date moved one day later than in 2025 because the gender pay gap in the U.S. widened for a second consecutive year.
Census Bureau data show women who work full-time, year-round now earn 81 cents for every dollar earned by men in comparable work, down from 83 cents a year earlier and 84 cents two years ago. Deborah Vagins, director of the Equal Pay Today coalition, says this is the first back-to-back widening of the gap since the 1960s. Equal Pay Today has scheduled observances in 2026 including Black Women’s Equal Pay Day on July 21, Moms’ Equal Pay Day on August 6, and Latina Equal Pay Day on October 8.
The Census Bureau attributes part of the shift to differing income trends: between 2023 and 2024 men’s median income rose 3.7% while women’s median income remained flat. The data behind this year’s equal pay date cover 2024 and therefore reflect the period when Joe Biden was president; figures that include 2025 will be released later.
The Biden administration supported measures to narrow pay disparities among federal workers and contractors, but advocates ran into resistance in Congress on broader reforms. Equal Pay Today has pushed for federal pay-transparency laws that would require employers to list salary ranges in job postings and bar questions about applicants’ past pay. Vagins argues those rules matter because even well-intentioned employers can inadvertently perpetuate prior pay discrimination.
Some states have adopted pay-transparency laws. Research on their effects is mixed: transparency can reduce some inequities but does not always translate into higher wages for women. Vagins says closing the overall gap will likely be difficult without stronger legal tools.
Federal pay-reporting efforts that once required employers to break out wages by sex, race and ethnicity offered important insight into occupational pay disparities and segregation. That initiative, supported during the Obama administration and partly overseen by Vagins at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was halted early in the Trump administration after officials said it placed burdens on employers. The coalition hopes a future congressional shift could restore such reporting. “If you can’t measure what’s going on, you can’t fix it,” Vagins says.
Multiple forces drive the wage gap, with occupational segregation a major factor: women remain overrepresented in lower-wage jobs such as restaurant work, hotel housekeeping and child care. Gaps also persist within occupations; studies find male doctors earn more than female doctors across specialties. Those differences compound over a lifetime, producing smaller retirement savings, lower Social Security benefits and reduced ability to build intergenerational wealth. Vagins stresses the long-lasting consequences for women and their families.