Women earn USD 0.82 for every dollar men earn on the uncontrolled measure, and that gap widened in 2026 from USD 0.83, the first backward move in recent years. The aggregate figure hides a steeper structure underneath: women aged 45 and over earn USD 0.71 per dollar, and women executives earn USD 0.69, meaning seniority and age compound rather than offset. Europe’s unadjusted gap sits materially narrower at around 12.7%. The figures below come from Payscale’s 2026 Gender Pay Gap Report, US federal earnings data, and Eurostat.
TL;DR
- The uncontrolled gender pay gap is USD 0.82 per dollar (Payscale, 2026)
- That means women collectively earn 18% less (Payscale, 2026)
- The gap was USD 0.83, or 17%, in 2024 (Payscale)
- The measure widened rather than narrowed in 2026 (Payscale)
- Women aged 45 and older earn USD 0.71 per dollar (Payscale, 2026)
- Women executives earn USD 0.69 per dollar (Payscale, 2026)
- Women earned 83.6% of men’s earnings in 2024 US federal data (US federal data)
- Women aged 25 to 34 earn around 95 cents per dollar (US federal data)
- Europe’s unadjusted gap is approximately 12.7% (Eurostat)
- That equals about 87.3 cents per euro (Eurostat)
- Europe’s gap was 14.1% in 2020 (Eurostat)
- The uncontrolled gap includes occupational segregation effects (Payscale)
- The controlled gap compares like-for-like roles and is far smaller (Payscale)
1. The Headline Gap Widened
The direction is the story this year. Payscale’s uncontrolled gap moved to USD 0.82 per dollar in 2026 from USD 0.83 in 2024, taking the shortfall from 17% to 18%. A one-cent move is small in isolation, but it interrupts a pattern of gradual narrowing that had held for several reporting cycles.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Uncontrolled gender pay gap, 2026 | USD 0.82 per dollar | Payscale |
| Implied shortfall | 18% | Payscale |
| Uncontrolled gap, 2024 | USD 0.83 per dollar | Payscale |
| Implied shortfall in 2024 | 17% | Payscale |
| Direction of change | widened | Payscale |
| Size of the move | 1 cent | Derived from Payscale figures |
| What the uncontrolled measure captures | all women versus all men, any role | Payscale |
| What it does not isolate | pay for identical work | Payscale |
The uncontrolled measure is the right one for asking whether women earn less overall, and the wrong one for asking whether an employer pays men and women differently for the same job. Both questions matter and they are not the same question.
The distinction is what makes this statistic so persistently contested. Critics of the headline figure point out, correctly, that it compares a nurse to an engineer and therefore cannot demonstrate discrimination in pay-setting. Defenders point out, also correctly, that the reason women are concentrated in lower-paid occupations is not a neutral accident and that a measure controlling it away discards the thing most worth explaining. Both positions are consistent with the same data. The productive question is not which number is real but which mechanism a given policy is meant to address: pay audits target the controlled gap, while occupational access and caregiving policy target the uncontrolled one. Source: Payscale 2026 Gender Pay Gap Report.
2. Age Compounds the Gap
The aggregate figure averages across a steep curve. Women aged 45 and older earn USD 0.71 for every dollar men earn, eleven cents below the all-ages figure, while women aged 25 to 34 earn around 95 cents per dollar in US federal data. The gap is not a constant tax; it accumulates across a career.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Women aged 45 and older | USD 0.71 per dollar | Payscale, 2026 |
| All-ages uncontrolled figure | USD 0.82 per dollar | Payscale, 2026 |
| Gap between those two | 11 cents | Derived from Payscale figures |
| Women aged 25 to 34 | around 95 cents per dollar | US federal data |
| Spread between youngest and oldest cohorts | approx. 24 cents | Derived |
| Direction of the relationship with age | widening | Payscale |
| Women’s overall share of men’s earnings, 2024 | 83.6% | US federal data |
| Direction of that federal measure | slight improvement | US federal data |
A 24-cent spread between women in their late twenties and women over 45 is larger than the headline gap itself, which means age is the dominant variable in this dataset. Workplace context sits in our workplace burnout statistics. Source: HR Dive on the 2026 gender pay gap report.
3. Seniority Makes It Worse, Not Better
The intuition that the gap closes as women reach senior roles is contradicted by the data. Women executives earn USD 0.69 per dollar, thirteen cents below the overall uncontrolled figure and the widest gap in Payscale’s breakdown. Promotion does not neutralise the disparity; it coincides with the widest version of it.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Women executives | USD 0.69 per dollar | Payscale, 2026 |
| All-ages uncontrolled figure | USD 0.82 per dollar | Payscale, 2026 |
| Gap between executives and overall | 13 cents | Derived from Payscale figures |
| Women aged 45 and older | USD 0.71 per dollar | Payscale, 2026 |
| Overlap between the two categories | substantial | Derived |
| Payscale’s framing | cumulative career disadvantage | Payscale, 2026 |
| Direction versus the intuitive expectation | opposite | Derived |
| Widest gap in the breakdown | executives | Payscale, 2026 |
The executive and over-45 populations overlap heavily, so these are not two independent findings so much as two views of the same accumulation. Source: ESG Dive on the widening 2026 gap.
4. Europe Sits Narrower
Cross-border comparison requires care about which measure is being used, but the direction is consistent. The unadjusted gender pay gap in Europe is approximately 12.7%, equivalent to about 87.3 cents per euro, down from 14.1% in 2020. That is meaningfully narrower than the 18% uncontrolled shortfall Payscale reports in the United States, and it moved the right way over the same period the US measure moved the wrong way.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| European unadjusted gender pay gap | approx. 12.7% | Eurostat |
| Equivalent per-euro figure | approx. 87.3 cents | Eurostat |
| European gap in 2020 | 14.1% | Eurostat |
| Change since 2020 | narrowed 1.4 points | Derived from Eurostat figures |
| US uncontrolled shortfall, 2026 | 18% | Payscale |
| US direction over the same period | widened | Payscale |
| Difference between the two regions | approx. 5 points | Derived |
| Comparability caveat | different methodologies | Derived |
The European unadjusted measure and the US uncontrolled measure are conceptually similar but not identical in construction, so the five-point difference should be read as directional rather than precise. Europe also reports a single figure across member states whose national gaps vary enormously, from low single digits in some countries to well above the bloc average in others, so the 12.7% is an aggregate that describes few individual labour markets accurately. Source: European gender pay gap country rankings.
5. Controlled Versus Uncontrolled
Almost every dispute about this statistic comes down to which measure someone is citing. The uncontrolled gap compares all women to all men regardless of role and captures occupational segregation; the controlled gap compares like-for-like and is always far smaller. Citing only the controlled figure understates the problem; citing only the uncontrolled figure invites the objection that it compares different jobs.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Uncontrolled gap, 2026 | USD 0.82 per dollar | Payscale |
| What uncontrolled captures | all roles, includes occupational segregation | Payscale |
| What controlled captures | same job, same qualifications | Payscale |
| Relative size of the controlled gap | always much smaller | Payscale |
| Uncontrolled gap for women 45 and over | USD 0.71 | Payscale |
| Uncontrolled gap for executives | USD 0.69 | Payscale |
| US federal median earnings ratio, 2024 | 83.6% | US federal data |
| European unadjusted gap | approx. 12.7% | Eurostat |
The two measures are complements rather than rivals: the controlled gap isolates unequal pay for equal work, and the difference between the two measures is roughly the size of the occupational segregation effect.
One caution applies to the controlled measure specifically. Controlling for job title, seniority, and tenure removes exactly the variables through which unequal treatment often operates. If women are promoted more slowly, a model that controls for seniority will report a small gap while treating the slower promotion as background rather than as part of the phenomenon. That does not make the controlled figure useless, but it does mean a small controlled gap is not evidence that an organisation treats men and women equally. It is evidence that, among people who already hold the same job, pay is similar. Employment context sits in our disability employment statistics and sector context in our women in gaming statistics. Source: Payscale 2026 Gender Pay Gap Report.
Summary: The Gender Pay Gap by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Uncontrolled gap, 2026 | USD 0.82 per dollar | Payscale |
| Implied shortfall | 18% | Payscale |
| Uncontrolled gap, 2024 | USD 0.83 per dollar | Payscale |
| Shortfall in 2024 | 17% | Payscale |
| Direction of change | widened | Payscale |
| Women aged 45 and older | USD 0.71 per dollar | Payscale |
| Women executives | USD 0.69 per dollar | Payscale |
| Gap between executives and overall | 13 cents | Derived |
| Women aged 25 to 34 | around 95 cents per dollar | US federal data |
| Spread across age cohorts | approx. 24 cents | Derived |
| US median earnings ratio, 2024 | 83.6% | US federal data |
| European unadjusted gap | approx. 12.7% | Eurostat |
| European per-euro equivalent | approx. 87.3 cents | Eurostat |
| European gap in 2020 | 14.1% | Eurostat |
| Difference between US and Europe | approx. 5 points | Derived |
| Relative size of the controlled gap | much smaller | Payscale |
Methodology and Sources
- Uncontrolled gap figures, age breakdowns, and executive-level data come from Payscale’s 2026 Gender Pay Gap Report (Payscale), with contemporaneous coverage of the widening (HR Dive, ESG Dive).
- US federal median earnings ratios and the age-cohort comparison come from published federal earnings data as compiled in equal pay research (Equal Pay Today).
- European unadjusted gap figures and the 2020 comparison come from Eurostat data as compiled in cross-country analysis (EuroSalary country rankings, Justparity EU statistics).
- Data watch: the uncontrolled and controlled gaps measure different things and are routinely confused in public debate. The uncontrolled figure compares all women’s pay to all men’s pay across every role and therefore includes the effect of women being concentrated in lower-paying occupations; it is not a measure of unequal pay for identical work. Payscale’s data comes from self-reported salary submissions to its own platform, which is a large sample but not a probability sample of the workforce, so it may not be nationally representative. The one-cent widening from 2024 to 2026 is within the range that sampling variation could produce and should not be treated as an established reversal on a single observation. US and European figures use different methodologies and the roughly five-point difference between them is directional rather than precise. Rows marked as derived are arithmetic on published figures.
- Last updated: August 2, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly as Payscale, federal statistical agencies, and Eurostat publish new earnings data.