The gender and race wage gap is narrowing, but access to opportunity and discrepancies in salaries persist for underrepresented tech talent, especially for Black and Hispanic women, according to a new report.
The wage gap – the difference in salaries between two defined demographic groups – across gender and race is narrowing, but still prevalent, confirmed Hired. Black and Hispanic women continue to see the widest wage gap, revealed its annual State of Wage Inequality in the Tech Industry report.
Every year, Hired’s report finds there is a strong link between the wage gap and salary expectations of underrepresented candidates. The data continues to show groups who are paid less also expect lower salaries than their White male counterparts. That is the case even when they have the same experience. Race and gender combined are the strongest drivers to the expectation gap – with Hispanic women and Black women only expecting $0.91 to every $1 salary of their White male counterparts.
Hispanic and Asian candidates reported a 1.5% and 1% percentage expectation gap improvement, respectively. However, Hispanic and Asian women showed a wider expectation gap than their male counterparts. In addition, Black candidates showed a slight widening of 0.1% in the wage expectation gap – the only increase in expectation gap across candidates in 2021.
KEY FINDINGS
Additional key findings from the report found that:
There are signs of progress in the gender opportunity gap.
The research found a sizable decrease in the percentage of positions sending interview requests to only men. In 2020, 42.4% of positions were given to men, compared to 36.7% in 2021.
The gender wage gap narrowed in many places but opportunity access remains a challenge.
In most markets or locations, the gender wage gap narrowed. Denver, Seattle, San Francisco/Bay Area and Boston metropolitan areas reported the narrowest reported wage gaps in the US. Outside the US, London showed the widest wage gap. Here women were offered £0.91 for every £1 paid to men in 2021. However, some of the markets with the most narrow wage gaps (Denver, Boston and Seattle) also showed the largest underrepresentation of women candidates receiving interview requests, compared to male counterparts.
The wage gap persists for remote roles.
A gender wage gap was also found among remote jobs and local jobs when examining salary expectations and final salaries. Remote gender wage gaps were slightly wider than those of local jobs/roles. In other words, remote jobs had wider wage and expectation gaps versus local jobs.
Race impacts the number of interview requests for candidates.
In 2021, companies continued to increase their interview requests to diverse candidates. Interview requests to only White jobseekers (23.2% to 14.8%) or only White and Asian jobseekers decreased from 61.4% in 2020 to 49% in 2021.
LGBTQ+ impact remains low
LGBTQ+ jobseekers remain overrepresented in interview requests relative to jobseekers who identify as straight and cisgender. However, there was a decrease in overrepresentation in interview requests in 2021 (2.8% in 2021 versus 14.1% in 2020). There is a very narrow wage gap for LGBTQ+ jobseekers versus non-LGBTQ+ jobseekers (0.4% overall).
EQUITABLE HIRING PROCESSES
“It’s been an ever-shifting and evolving hiring landscape for employers and jobseekers over the last few years – from companies competing and sourcing for talent at a record pace, to the current state of macroeconomic uncertainty driving more measured hiring,” commented Josh Brenner, CEO at Hired. “This report shows that there is still work to be done in ensuring equitable hiring processes to narrow wage and expectation gaps. And companies must prioritise this effort. Post-great resignation, companies that are successful in identifying non-traditional talent, while also ensuring diversity and representation in their candidate pipelines, will be better positioned to drive their businesses forward in a time of increased volatility.”
Hired also found that companies using Diversity Goals, its new tool to help companies prioritise outreach to underrepresented talent without removing relevant matching candidates, were able to more than double their pipeline of underrepresented candidates. Consequently, these companies had both a lower wage and expectation gap compared to companies with the tool option turned off.
Every year, Hired’s Impact Report finds a strong correlation between the wage gap and salary expectations of underrepresented candidates. This report demonstrates the ongoing need for equitable hiring processes. It’s critical to prioritise this in order to reduce and eliminate wage and expectation gaps. In addition, companies who identify non-traditional talent, while nurturing diversity in their candidate pipelines, will be in a better position to move businesses forward despite volatility in the marketplace, noted the report. The sixth annual report analyses wage and expectation gaps in salary data across gender, race, age and sexuality in tech. The findings are based on over 3,900 participating companies and more than 120,000 jobseekers in the US, UK and Canada.
Click here to access the report.
DISCRIMINATION IN TECH
Other reports also confirm that alarming inequities and discrimination still exist for women and non-binary employees in the tech industry. Most (94%) women in tech believe they are held to a ‘higher standard’ than male colleagues, confirmed a recent study. Black professionals in tech have to switch jobs more frequently than peers to seek career growth and progression, according to another report.
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