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What’s Working: Colorado women earned 85.4 cents for every dollar a man made in 2021

It was even worse in the pandemic. Plus: CSU’s economic forecast for the state, daily paychecks and it’s National Small Business Week!

The waters of the Yampa River flow through downtown Steamboat Springs Tuesday afternoon, March 14, 2023.
John F. Russell/Steamboat Pilot & Today

Colorado women saw substantial gains in salary equity compared to what men made in the latest women’s wages report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Or did they?

The vast improvement had women in Colorado making 85.4 cents for every dollar a man made in 2021, up from 78.1 cents in the prior year. But back up another year to 2019 and Colorado women were actually better off, making 86.4% of what men made.



The plunge and the recovery in recent years may seem a head-scratcher. But Julie Percival, a BLS regional economist for the Southwest and Mountain Plains office, said it wasn’t a typo. 

“The big change over this period was the employment shock that occurred due to the pandemic,” Percival said in an email. And now, “that ratio returns to what we’d expect to see for Colorado — mid-80s.”



Read more at ColoradoSun.com.


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