The Hired study found that white, male tech workers tend to earn the most, while female tech workers of minority races faced the biggest wage gaps. (Hired Image)

The gender wage gap in the U.S. has been slowly shrinking over the past decades, but in tech and other industries the gap is still far from gone.

A new study released by job search platform Hired found that the wage gap between male and female tech workers is still significant, though by some measures it has shrunk since Hired released its inaugural wage gap study one year ago.

The 2017 study, based on 120,000 job offers made on Hired’s platform, also took a closer look at how race and sexual orientation impact the pay gap. Though there wasn’t enough data on minority and LGBTQ tech workers for a detailed comparison, the study found that, on average, black and Latina women and women who identified as LGBTQ faced larger pay gaps than their white and straight counterparts.

The data isn’t particularly surprising given the persistent gender wage gap in workplaces across the globe. A study last year by the American Association of University Women predicted it will take 136 years for the pay gap to close.

But some of the Hired’s data stands out nonetheless.

For the same position at the same company, female tech workers were offered a lower salary 63 percent of the time. The pay gap was four percent on average. (Hired Image)

The study found that women were offered lower salaries than men 63 percent of the time when both candidates were being offered the same position at the same company. That’s down from 69 percent in the study last year.

On average, women were offered salaries that were four percent lower than those offered to men, and in one out of every ten cases that gap was 20 percent or more. In some cases, the gap was as high as 50 percent.

Across all industries, studies have found that women currently earn about 83 percent of what men do, so the tech industry is generally ahead of the curve when looked at in context.

But there’s another persistent issue with regards to women in tech: there are just less female tech workers. Hired found that in 53 percent of the cases, companies only interviewed men for a position. The reverse was true just six percent of the time.

When the researchers compared their data on who was interviewed with the ratio of men to women in the candidate pool, they found women were underrepresented two-thirds of the time.

While the study’s focus was on reporting numbers and not discerning reasons behind them, other data did suggest that female tech workers may be paid less because they tend to be more reserved when negotiating pay and other benefits. Managers also often base their offers on previous salaries, perpetuating and possibly even widening the gap over time.

The numbers drive home what many in the tech community already know: diversity and equity are still not a reality for much of the tech workforce, and it will take concerted effort to change that fact.

On a related note, this week in honor of Equal Pay Day, Seattle-based Zillow Group announced that its female employees earn $1.01 for every dollar that male workers earn for comparable roles.

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