The White House released its annual report to Congress on 2014 White House Staff Salaries yesterday and Zachary A. Goldfarb of the Washington Post analyzed the data and found a gender pay gap of 13% based on the difference between the average White House male staffer salary of $88,600 and the average female salary of $78,400. A few issues and comments about the Washington Post article:
1. Comparisons of salaries by gender (or ethnic groups) almost always use median salaries, not average salaries.
2. Calculating gender gaps/disparities usually compares the ratio of average/median salaries. In this case, the female-male salary ratio for the Washington Post’s data of averages would be $78,400 / $88,600, for a salary ratio of 88.5%, and a gender gap of 11.5%, not the 13% reported by the Post.
3. My own detailed analysis of the 2014 White House Staff Salaries reveals the following:
a. There are 230 female White House staffers earning an average salary of $79,137 (not $78,400 as the Post is reporting) and a median salary of $65,650.
b. There are 224 male White House staffers earning an average salary of $87,353 (not $88,600 as the Post reported) and a median salary of $75,750.
c. Using median 2014 White House salaries, female staffers currently earn 86.7% of the median salary for men, or 86.7 cents for every $1 men earn (see chart above). That would mean that there is currently a 13.3% gender pay gap at the White House.
The Washington Post did offer this caveat:
The Post calculated the averages on pay disparity after determining the gender of employees through their names and basic research. A few employees could not be identified by gender, but their inclusion in the data would not have changed the overall findings.
Although challenging, I am fairly confident that I was able to correctly identify the gender of each of the 454 White House employees, which explains the minor differences in my salary statistics and the Post’s statistics since I am using all 454 employees and the Post’s report is based on a slightly smaller number of employees.
What’s more important than the minor differences between my analysis and the Post’s, are the facts that: a) a persistent gender pay at the White House exists, b) the 13.3% pay gap this year at the White House is not likely the result of gender discrimination, and c) the findings of gender pay gaps in the general economy or at specific organizations are also not likely the result of gender discrimination. While Obama and gender activists constantly lecture us about gender pay gaps nationally, with the assumption that any pay gap results from gender discrimination, the persistent gender pay at Obama’s own White House exposes the White House hypocrisy. If a 13.3% pay gap at the Obama White House results from factors having nothing to do with gender discrimination, isn’t is possible that the national gender pay gaps also have nothing to do with discrimination? That is, if a 13.3% White House gender pay gap can be explained by factors other than discrimination, can’t a similar gender pay gap, if it exists at Target, Ford or ExxonMobil, also be explained by factors other than discrimination?
CNN reporter Michelle Kosinski appeared to understand the White House hypocrisy today when she grilled White House spokesman Josh Earnest with the following comments and questions:
On middle class issues and equal pay for equal work — whenever these numbers come out concerning the White House — it keeps coming up repeatedly that the metric that the White House cites for there being a gender pay gap nationwide also exists at the White House….
The White House’s response, of course, is when you look at the salary numbers for equal pay for equal work, which should be at the heart of this, it is equal [at the White House]. So do you think that that comparison, then, is one that should not be made, using salary averages [or medians] — whether you apply average salaries to the country as a whole or to salary averages the White House?
Josh Earnest responded:
There are a variety of measures to try to get at whether or not workers are receiving equal pay for equal work. You can look at whether individuals who hold the same title make the same salary. That’s certainly the case at the White House. So there is equal pay for equal work that is demonstrated here at the White House.
MP: In other words, when Obama claims that there’s a gender pay gap crisis nationally that needs more of his legislation (“President Obama knows that women being paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men isn’t just unfair, it hurts families. So the first law he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to help ensure that women are paid the same as men for doing the exact same work.”) he uses aggregate salary statistics to claim that there’s a pay gap based on gender discrimination. But when the White House defends its own 13.3% gender pay gap, they suddenly want to disregard the aggregate statistics showing a significant gender pay disparity, and start controlling for all of the variables that can explain gender pay differences, except for discrimination.
Team Obama can’t have it both ways, either: a) there are gender pay differences in any organization, including the White House, than can be explained by factors besides gender discrimination and result in natural differences in aggregate median salaries, or b) any gender pay gap in aggregate salaries in any organization immediately exposes gender discrimination — including the White House — and the pay gaps at those organizations can only be addressed by additional legislation and more rigorous enforcement of existing legislation.
Bottom Line: If Obama applied his typical approach of comparing aggregate salaries to detect discrimination, he would have to admit ongoing gender discrimination at the White House. Alternatively, if a 13.3% gender pay gap at the White House can be explained by factors other than discrimination, Obama should stop using aggregate salary statistics to lecture us about a gender pay gap crisis at the national level