Equal Pay Day arrives again, marking how far into the new year women must work to earn what men made the previous year. This year it falls on March 26 — one day later than in 2025 — because the gender pay gap in the U.S. widened for the second consecutive year.
Census Bureau figures show women working 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 organizes multiple observances; for 2026 it schedules 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 notes one reason for the shift: between 2023 and 2024 men’s median income rose 3.7% while women’s median income held steady. The data underlying this year’s equal pay date covers 2024 and thus reflects the period when Joe Biden was president; figures for 2025 will be released later in the year.
The Biden administration backed steps to reduce pay disparities among federal workers and contractors, but advocates faced resistance in Congress on broader measures. Equal Pay Today pushed for federal pay-transparency laws that would require salary ranges in job postings and ban employers from asking applicants about past pay. Vagins argues such rules are important because even well-meaning employers can perpetuate past pay discrimination.
Some states have enacted pay-transparency laws, and studies show mixed outcomes: transparency can reduce inequities but does not always lead to higher wages for women. Vagins believes closing the gap will be difficult without broader legal tools.
Federal data collection that once required employers to report pay broken down by sex, race and ethnicity offered important insight into occupational pay disparities and segregation. That initiative, supported during the Obama administration and overseen in part by Vagins at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was halted early in the Trump administration on grounds it burdened employers. The coalition hopes a future congressional shift could revive such reporting — “If you can’t measure what’s going on, you can’t fix it,” Vagins says.
Multiple factors drive the wage gap, but occupational segregation plays a large role: women are overrepresented in lower-wage fields like restaurant work, hotel housekeeping and child care. Even within professions, gaps persist; studies find male doctors earn more than female doctors across specialties. These disparities accumulate over a lifetime, resulting in smaller retirement savings, lower Social Security benefits, and diminished capacity to build generational wealth. Vagins emphasizes the long-lasting effects on women and their families.