All over the country, women across various industries are fighting for equal pay, and the tech industry is no exception.
According to data from Statista, the average pay gap in the tech industry for cities across the US is about 16%, meaning that on average, women in tech get paid about 16% less than their male counterparts. This is much higher than the pay gap in Kansas City, where women actually get paid two percent more than men. But in Silicon Valley cities – where both women and men are paid significantly higher incomes – the pay gap is actually higher.
Higher salaries in the Bay Area cities also mean that the difference in dollar amount is going to be drastically different: In New Jersey, where the salaries are most comparable to San Francisco’s, the pay gap comes out to about $5,328, while the pay gap in San Francisco is about $14,450 – almost three times the dollar difference.
There’s are a couple of important caveats for this pay gap, as a study by Smart Asset points out: the percent change in tech jobs from 2013 to 2016 and the percent of tech jobs filled by women. San Francisco, Fremont, and San Jose are all well above the average four-year tech employment growth of 10.9%, but they all fall shy of the 25.9% national average female employment rate.