Welcome to This Week in Benefits, a new biweekly podcast from Mployer Advisor, the company that is changing the way employers search, evaluate, and select insurance advisors online.      

In each episode, our team will bring you the latest news and industry updates in the world of employee benefits. We will break down top headlines, bring you interviews with industry insiders, and highlight market trends and stories we’re following.    

In case you missed Episode 12, click here to listen and here for the show notes.    

Show Notes      

Date: October 6, 2022    

Episode Season and Number: Season 1, Episode 13      

Episode Title: The Gender Wage Gap and Prioritizing Women’s Financial Health  

In this week's episode, Abbey Dean (Mployer Advisor's Director of Content) defines the gender wage gap and discusses why financial health for women is a critical consideration for employers. Plus, friend of the podcast Weller Emmons (Mployer Advisor's VP of Operations) provides an update to a previous episode.

To listen to Episode 13 of This Week in Benefits, click here.      

Additional Recommended Reading      

The Pew Research Center's Gender Pay Gap Wage Calculator Tool

The Economic Policy Institute's Definition of Gender Wage Gap

NPR's Interview With Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest

Ellevest's 2022 Financial Wellness Survey

The Department of Labor's Women's Bureau on Employment and Earnings by Occupation

5 Facts About the State of the Gender Pay Gap

This Week in Benefits, Episode 1 (UnitedHealth)

This Week in Benefits, Episode 5 (Financial Burnout and Voluntary Benefits)

Episode Transcript

Abbey Dean: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of This Week in Benefits, the podcast from Mployer Advisor where we discuss all things employee benefits. I'm your host, Abbey Dean, Mployer Advisor's Director of Content, and thanks for being here today. Today we're going to be discussing a topic that is near and dear to me, which is about financial health especially geared toward women. As many of you would be aware, national studies have proven time and time again that women by and large tend to make less and are paid less than men, even for jobs that are performed similarly or have similar titles.

So we're going to kind of explore that and what women may need to consider or should weigh when thinking about what financial wellness looks like for them. We're also going to be pairing that discussion with a look into a new study that has come out from the team at Ellevest, and it's their financial wellness survey. So we're going to look at how and if women's attitudes and approaches toward financial wellness have changed in the past year, in the past five years, and explore what that means and how that could impact employers. We also have an update from Weller where he admits, I think, for the first time that he was wrong about something. So stay tuned for that.

Weller Emmons: Hey, everyone just wanna provide a quick update. Looks like UnitedHealthcare has completed its acquisition of change. As we've mentioned several times on the podcast, we did not think that would go through. There was some challenges from a antitrust perspective, but a couple weeks ago, a judicial ruling cleared that hurdle and UnitedHealthcare was able to move forward with the acquisition. So I guess I'm wrong on this one and <laugh> terrible prediction on my part. I guess I'll eat crow on this one, but that's my update for the day.

Abbey Dean: Hey everyone. So first off, what I want to do is start off with a definition of gender wage gap for those of you who may be less familiar with it, and there are a lot of them floating around out there but this one comes from the Economic Policy Institute, which I feel like sums it up succinctly and the most clearly. So the Economic Policy Institute defines the gender wage gap as a measure of what women are paid relative to men. It is commonly calculated by dividing women's wages against men's wages, and the ratio is then often expressed as a percent or in dollar terms, which would then of course tell you how much a woman is paid for each dollar compared to a man. So that's a brief definition, but why I think this topic is important to talk about now is really because of the same issues that we've been talking about week after week.

Inflation is really hitting everyone hard and it will continue to hit everyone hard in the coming weeks and months ahead. But if you consider the gender wage gap, inflation tends to hurt women more because they simply have less wealth compared to men. And some of the facts I'm going to share with you in a minute, will also show you if you weren't already familiar, that women of color are also disproportionately hit worse because they have even less wealth. And the gap between what women of color make and men make is greater.

So I think this is important context to consider for women, all women listening to this podcast, all men listening to this podcast because you need to be an advocate for yourself, but also because as an employer, if you're thinking about what is important to you and what can give you a competitive edge when you are trying to recruit and retain talent, I think having context like this on hand could help you make more well-rounded and comprehensive decisions when it comes to extending job offers, planning your benefits even when coming up with survey questions to ensure that your employees are utilizing your benefits fully.

So that being said I have quite a few stats here that I wanna share. So first of all this number tends to change, but right now as of using 2021 data, women right now on average according to the Department of Labor, make just 83 cents for every dollar men make. Again, those numbers are even lower for women of color. Specifically, black women make 64 cents on the dollar. Native American women make 60 cents on the dollar. Latinas make 57 cents and API women make anywhere from between 52 to 90 cents for every dollar. A white man makes other facts that are important to consider. Women see wages drop after having a child, whereas men do not. Mothers on average are paid 71 cents to every dollar paid to fathers. What's more, one out of every four women has a disability on average, people with disabilities are also paid 37% less than non-disabled people. And finally, one that I'm sure our HR friends will probably be familiar with. For every 100 men promoted and hired to a manager level, only 72 women are promoted and hired. So men nationally end up holding 62% of manager jobs.

Of course, because this is a podcast about employee benefits, we have to ask if we consider the cost in cash of benefits, would women still be doing or would women be doing less bad relative to men? Unfortunately, <laugh> the gender pay gap in cash wages would not disappear by factoring in other employee benefits because women are less likely than men to have Mployer provided health insurance and have fewer retirement resources than men. And most of these stats I just listed come from the Department of Labor but some also come from the Economic Policy Institute. So that's a lot to throw at you. The other reason I thought this was a timely moment to talk about this important issue is because a new study came out from a financial literacy platform and investment platform that I follow called Ellevest. They do want a lot of wonderful content and they just released a new study that's found that women's financial health is at the lowest it has been at in five years.

So let's dive into that in some of the stats that were found in that study also, because it is all a little doom and gloom and seems like a bunch of bad news for anyone listening and being like, wow, Abbey, I'm so glad I tuned into this really uplifting podcast today. Even with all of those facts, I said obviously there is an incredible room for improvement, but it is important to say that since 1973 to now, gains in the wage gap and closing the wage gap have been substantial. Back in 1973, women were only making 57 cents per dollar compared to the 83 cents today. So gains are still being made. It is not all bad news. But anyway, back to this Ellevest study. So the Ellevest team found they surveyed 2,500 women from across the nation, all different ages, industries worked in that sort of thing. So here are some of the big takeaways that I wanted to highlight.

Women are prioritizing financial wellness in 2022, more so than any other year on record since they've been doing this study. So here's what they found women surveyed are three times as likely to see financial wellness as critical, which is now second only to mental wellness. So 48% of respondents said that mental wellness was the most important priority for them this year, seconded by financial wellness at 42%, physical wellness at 37%, and then spiritual wellness at 22%. We've done a different financial wellness episode that I will link here where we kind of go into what some of those mean a little bit more, but I'll be sure to leave those in the show notes. Other stats, which are I found highly relatable. A whopping 43% of women actively worry about money at least once a day and 59% do so at least once a week.

In both instances, women are out-worrying men quote "by 36% to 55% respectively." However, what is kind of interesting is that what kind of stress that women are dealing with really depends on their age and that's not incredibly surprising. It's very similar to how if you're thinking about what your workforce population is looking for in a benefits package, obviously your Gen X, Gen Z, baby boomers, everyone's going to have something a little bit different based on the stage of life they're in. So the Ellevest study found older women, aka Gen X and baby boomers, are more likely to be worried about pure economic volatility. So obviously this would encompass things like inflation, a possible recession, or even having to cut back on spending younger women. However, millennials and Gen Z are much more likely to worry about how political issues could affect their finance in the short and long term. Also, reproductive rights, perhaps unsurprisingly, came up as something that is also a cause for concern among women in this age group. Job security, the cost of childcare, housing prices and women's representation in government was also listed.

Another interesting worry that came up is men were more than twice as likely as women to say they feel financially prepared for recession, which kind of underscores this in this larger issue around women's financial confidence, which I think is something worth pausing for a moment to say that we've seen, and we've listed this as a topic of conversation in previous episodes. But I do think for all the HR managers listening, the CFOs, the brokers, there is a big moment here where financial health is a concern. And I know this episode is just for women or more centered on women obviously, but I think that's a really interesting area to dive into and explore what your company, how you as a manager could be supporting your staff more. Also, another interesting stat to kind of show the difference in confidence between men and women. Again, according to the study, nearly 70% of women also say they've never met with a financial advisor compared to just 41% of men, which again, kind of speaks to the financial confidence issue and some of the other gender disparities at play.

So those are some of the interesting findings from the Ellevest study that I wanted to call out but I wanted to say a few others too, which were not included in the study, but I think again, is important to sort of underscore the timeliness and weightiness of this conversation we're having today. So the DOL has a lot of wonderful visualization tools for those of you who are struggling to, who want to see more about just how much disparity there is in your states, in your city, in your region. And so I found when I was messing around with it, cause it's quite fun in a kind of sad way, <laugh>, when you see some of the results there are only a handful of occupations nationally where women earn slightly more than men, it turns out. In fact in over 350 occupations men's earnings significantly outweigh women's.

Also, another interesting fact the pandemic has also, I mean as it did in so many ways, the pandemic has stalled many gains that were made in closing the pay gap. This of course, comes to or it should account for layoffs, the lack of childcare that which could have forced many women out of the workforce entirely. But in February of 2021, the women's labor force participation rate was about 55%, which is the lowest it has been since April of 1987. So you may have seen headlines about how gender wage gap progress has been pushed back 30 years. That's the study they're referencing. And of course, women of color and those working in low wage occupations are those who are most impacted.

So when it comes to the sort of what do we do next? These are great facts, figures, data, it's very context rich, but what can we do with this? How can we use this data? How will it inform our decisions as employers, employees, and brokers? So I think for employers, there's a really rich opportunity here to think about and weigh how you would like to recruit and retain talent when you're coming up with salaries or negotiating or thinking about pay benefits, or excuse me, financial literacy benefits or anything like that. I think what the study and some of these facts show is that there's a real need for it, but also the context of the current market is going to make this more of a concern and a worry. You can see from some of those numbers from the Ellevest study, financial confidence is not great among women.

And so I think there's a real opportunity here to consider different types of education or awareness initiatives, or perhaps if you're a broker, you could consider seeing if employers are interested in different ideas around paid transparency other ideas around how you could better be an advocate for your employees and their financial health. Actually, it's really interesting, McKinsey, in a recent study they found that the global economy could be between $12 trillion to $28 trillion, larger in 2025 if women were employed at the same rate in the same roles and with the same pay as men. So I find that really compelling. I also think the other thing that should be said is when you're looking at DEI initiatives and you're looking at trying to diversify your workforce, whether you're hiring for new roles or building up departments, I think facts and figures like this are really essential to keep in the back of your mind.

Also, if you're someone listening who is considered changing jobs or industries or looking at different things you can do to be savvier when it comes to your own personal financial health, I think there's a lot of great research here that you could utilize for salary negotiations when it comes time for quarterly or annual reviews. And I think there's also a lot of other rich data. We included a little bit of it, but there's a lot of work to be done around transparency, around wages across the board especially when it comes to expanding access to paid leave and child and elder care. As the data, again continues to show that women really bear the burden of this and it affects them financially for years.

So there's a lot to say here, but what I want to do is I don't really wanna hear more from me about it. I wanna hear what you guys think. Let me know if gender wage, if the gender wage gap, if financial literacy, if pay transparency is something that you've been thinking about as employers or HR leaders. If so, what would you like to see? What would you like to hear? What are your questions? What are questions that employees are bringing to you? And what tools could we give you that we could help expand that conversation or at least make it more nuanced? So with that, I'm going to leave it here for now. I will say, I'm going to link this in the show notes tool. I wanna leave you guys with a final tool that I found incredibly instructive. <laugh>, also a little disheartening personally. The Pew Research Center, which is a wonderful organization, has a calculator tool. It's called, they call it their pay gap calculator, and basically it allows you to see the gender wage gap in your metropolitan area. So I will link this here. I discovered that for my metro area and my age group that I actually <LAUGH> or women and women like me earn 81% of what men their age earned in 2019. So actually underneath the national average, which is obviously very exciting.

It also is interesting to see the rank in metropolitan areas. So for instance, some of the top five metropolitan areas where the wage gap between men and women was the closest was in Napa, California, Dover, Delaware, Mercer, California, LA, and then the Naples and Marco Island, Florida area. So there was only a 2% to 3% gap in wages in those metro areas, which I find fascinating. My metro area on this list of 250 was ranked 126 <laugh>, which is disheartening, but also goes to show that there's again, lots of room for improvement. So data to hear. I will put this tool in the show notes. Please let me know what your results are, where you are listening from and how and why you think more conversations around topics like this would be instructive for your workforce or could make your job a little easier day to day, because that's what we're here to help you do.

That wraps up today's episode. Thanks so much to everyone for listening. As always, please follow us, us a review, leave us a voicemail message, as you heard Weller do today, and let me know what questions you guys have or what other topics you would like to see us cover in upcoming episodes. In the meantime, thanks again as always for tuning in, and I will see you next time.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of This Week in Benefits, brought to you by Mployer Advisor. Mployer Advisor is changing the way employers search, evaluate, and select insurance brokers. Our intuitive platform connects employers and employees to get great benefits and insurance plans by providing employers with actionable data to easily evaluate and select the best advisor for your company's specific needs. To learn more about Mployer, Advisor and our suite of products, please visit our website at mployeradvisor.com and tune in next time. Thanks.

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