Trends in Women’s Wages, 1981–2015

Abstract

The Social Security Administration maintains wage and salary earnings records for all American workers. From those administrative records, the agency extracts a 1 percent sample called the Continuous Work History Sample (CWHS) for research and statistical purposes. This article uses CWHS data to examine trends in women’s real wage and salary earnings from 1981 through 2015. It first describes broad trends for all women aged 25–59. Then it describes the trends over that same span for women in each of seven 5-year age intervals (25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, 45–49, 50–54, and 55–59), with detail by individual birth cohort. A series of charts shows how women’s real annual wages changed across age groups and birth cohorts within each age group.

Keywords: Earnings, Wages, Compensation

JEL Classification: D31, J31