WJR Business Beat: Black Women Fall Behind in Employment Compensation (Episode 434)

Good morning, Paul!

Hired.com tracks hiring and employment trends and they’ve just released a report that shows that black women, in particular, are not faring as well in the job market as their counterparts. The report finds that black women were offered lower salaries in 2021 versus what they were offered in 2020 and that their white female counterparts were offered more for the same or a similar position on average. For every $1 of base salary companies offered white male candidates in 2021, they offered 92 cents to black female candidates, and while still less, white female job seekers were offered 95 cents.

Josh Brenner, Hired.com CEO, told the Sacramento Business Journal that the state of black candidates in general, but specifically that for black women, in their 2021 data actually showed a decline in progress and he went on to say that there’s a definite need for improvement.

Now a deeper look, Paul, into hired.com’s report reveals some enlightening information that could be important as a root cause in understanding how to address and fix this problem and that is that there tends to be lower pay expectations by black women when applying for a job versus that of white men, for example, when they seek employment for the same or similar position, for every dollar white male job seekers listed as their preferred salary, black women listed 91 cents per dollar requested by their counterparts, according to hired.com’s report.

Lower salary expectations and demands are correlated with lower pay offers, Brenner said. Let’s hope that the playing field starts to turn the other way, Paul, and things even out for all seeking positions in employment today.

I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of startupnation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.