Is the Gender Pay Gap Getting Worse in 2026? What the Numbers Say and How to Close Yours

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.

Is the gender pay gap getting worse? Depending on which 2026 report you open, the answer is yes, no, and “it depends on who you are.” I am going to walk you through all three. Then we are going to talk about your paycheck, because that is the gap you can start closing this year.

First, a confession. Early in my career, I was taking a new role at another company. The offer came back decent. Not bad at all. I took a breath and told the recruiter, “I'd really like 5,000 more.” He said he would go back and see what he could do.

Fifteen minutes later my phone rang. “We'll give you 10,000 more if you sign tonight.”

Say what? Fifteen minutes. Ten thousand dollars. He had that money sitting in his back pocket the whole time, and I almost signed without asking for a penny of it. (Girl! Why do we do that to ourselves???)

That phone call was my proof that I had not been asking for enough. I spent 15+ years in HR, rising to Chief People Officer, and I watched so many women make the exact same choice I almost made.

Raise Your Hand If You Took the First Number

Raise your hand if you have rewritten the number in your head five times before saying it out loud.

Raise your hand if you took the first offer because you did not want to seem greedy.

Raise your hand if you have watched a man get the raise you asked for and wondered what he did that you didn't.

Raise your hand if you have done the math late at night on what staying quiet has cost you over the last ten years.

You're not crazy. You are working inside pay systems that make asking feel dangerous, and this year's research has the receipts.

Where This Conversation Started

This post grew out of my conversation with Meghan (Meg) Pierce on Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors. Meg joined the Forum of Executive Women in 2023 as the first president and CEO in its history. The Forum is a Philadelphia organization of senior women leaders, and every year it publishes a pay equity report and a Women in Leadership report on the region's public companies. Meg came to the Forum from the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and a career in policy, and right now she is taking the pay numbers on the road.

You can listen to the full episode here: Only 9 Women CEOs Out of 100: Philadelphia's Real Pay Gap Numbers, with Meghan Pierce.

We covered a lot of ground in that conversation. In this post I want to go deeper on the newest numbers, why the gap keeps hitting some women harder, and what you can do about your own pay.

Is the Gender Pay Gap Getting Worse in 2026?

Here is what the newest national data says, in plain English.

In September 2026, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that women who work full time, year round earned 83.9 percent of what men earned in 2025, up from 80.6 percent in 2024. Median earnings rose 3.2 percent for women and did not change significantly for men. That is progress, and I will take it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks weekly paychecks. In the second quarter of 2026, women working full time had median weekly earnings of $1,131. That is 82.0 percent of the $1,380 median for men.

Then the Economic Policy Institute ran the numbers by the hour. Its March 2026 analysis found women were paid 18.6 percent less than men on average in 2025, after adjusting for race and ethnicity, education, age, marital status and state. That gap had shrunk to a series low of 18.0 percent in 2024. By EPI's measure, it got worse last year.

Now look closely at who is paid the least. The same EPI analysis found Black women are paid 68.3 percent of white men's wages at the middle, and Hispanic women are paid 64.5 percent.

Ugh. For every dollar a white man earns at the middle, a Hispanic woman earns about 65 cents.

So which is it, better or worse? Each report measures something a little different (annual earnings, weekly earnings, or hourly wages adjusted for who is working). Put them side by side and you get the answer Meg gave me on the show: progress overall, and a gap that is widening for women of color and in certain industries. (Which of those numbers surprised you the most?)

The Philadelphia Numbers Every City Should Be Asking For

Meg's region is a perfect case study. The Forum's 2026 report, as covered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in June 2026, found women in Philadelphia earn about 89 cents for every dollar men make, and the gap narrowed between 2015 and 2024.

Then you peel back the onion. Compared with non-Hispanic white men, white women in Philadelphia earn 94 cents. Black women earn 64 cents. Hispanic and Latina women earn 57 cents.

The gap narrowed in finance, retail and real estate. It widened in arts, utilities and construction. Women make up 76 percent of healthcare workers and 66 percent of education workers in the city, and median annual earnings in both of those sectors were below $60,000.

The Forum calls this the “Philadelphia Paradox”: measurable gains in overall pay parity alongside structural inequities driven by race, sector and how pay is built. Meg told me these trends are not unique to Philly, and the national numbers above back her up. (Go see whether your state or city publishes a report like this one. It is worth knowing the number where you live.)

Why the Gap Lands Harder on Women Who Do Everything Right

Meg named the first reason plainly: systemic bias. Women get left out of structural things at work, like salary negotiation, that men have historically had better access to. And women are often not paid fairly for skills like people management, which so many of us carry for the whole team.

It starts with the first offer

When I was a Chief People Officer, I worked from salary bands with a rubric. If the band was $100K to $150K, the rubric told me exactly where a person should land based on their skills and the requirements of the role, and I had open conversations about it. Then I would hear other people say something along these lines: “Oh, that girl only asked for 80K? Let's offer 75 and see if she takes it.”

(That infuriated me every single time. The men were putting forward higher numbers, the women were putting forward lower ones, and the company was happy to take the discount.)

Here is why it matters so much. Every 3 percent raise is a percentage of the number you started with. Start low and you are climbing a ladder with the bottom rungs sawed off, and somebody still expects you to do it in heels.

Quick math, just humor me. Say you start $5,000 below the man hired next to you, and you both get a 3 percent raise every year. After ten years you have earned more than $57,000 less than he has, and that is before a single bonus.

Bonuses widen it again

Meg told me bonuses are where a lot of the inequity creeps back in. If you do not walk in at the end of the fiscal year and say “I deserve X,” you often do not get X. She was also clear that we should not overly normalize the idea that women are bad at negotiating, because she does not believe that is the case. (Amen, Meg.)

Sponsors find the men earlier

The 2025 Women in the Workplace report from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey found the sponsorship gap is widest at the entry level, where just 31 percent of women have a sponsor compared with 45 percent of men. Employees with sponsors are nearly twice as likely to have been promoted in the last two years.

Whole dang careers get shaped right there, in the first few years, before most women even know a sponsor is something they need. (Any HR leader who pulls their own promotion data can spot this. And when it becomes a pattern, it becomes a problem.)

Caregiving costs us twice

Meg pointed out that the family structures most of us live inside push the gap even wider. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act entitles eligible employees to up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave. Unpaid. So who can afford to take it? Usually the person who earns less, and that is usually the woman.

I lived a version of this. I stayed home for about 10 to 12 weeks with each of my kids, and I learned them in those weeks. My husband was still working, so he did not learn them the same way. Then I went back to work, and do you think anybody stopped to renegotiate the duties? Absolutely not. (That part is on me too, y'all. And it happens in so many homes.)

The Glass Ceiling and the Sticky Floor in Your Paycheck

On the show I asked Meg about sticky floors, the limiting beliefs and habits that keep women stuck. In my Sticky Floors vs. Glass Ceilings framework, both show up in your pay.

The glass ceiling is the system: lowball offers, bonus decisions made behind closed doors, unpaid leave, and sponsors who notice the men first. You did not build it.

The sticky floor is the fear that keeps you from asking. The worry that they will pull the offer. The worry that you will look greedy. Meg tells women all the time that the worst they can say is no.

You can work on the floor today while you keep pushing on the ceiling. Here is how.

Five Ways to Close Your Own Pay Gap

1. Ask for the band before you name a number

This was Meg's favorite move, and it is mine too. She told me to ask transparent questions during the interview, and not be afraid to ask this one: “What is the band for this pay or for this job?”

The research backs her up. A 2026 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology from Cornell's ILR School looked at nearly 10 million U.S. job postings and ran experiments with real job seekers. Women preferred jobs with narrower posted pay ranges, and people who chose those jobs negotiated less. When job ads explained the typical starting salary and how final offers are set, the gender gaps in applying and negotiating disappeared. As of 2025, 15 states and Washington, D.C., required employers to disclose salary ranges in job postings.

So ask two questions. What is the band? And where do people with my experience usually land in it?

2. Bring receipts, every single time

Meg said that, bad bosses aside, a supervisor is not going to be angry at you for coming in with tangible evidence of how you met your KPIs and contributed to the team, and asking for a merit-based increase. Receipts matter. Keep a running list of wins with numbers attached: the revenue, the hours saved, the project you rescued. Creating the paper trail is what lets you say your number without apologizing for it.

3. Become the woman a sponsor wants to vouch for

Here is how Meg defined it: “A sponsor is someone who is saying your name in rooms when you're not already there and is giving you really tangible advice about how to advance.” She suggested looking for one outside your own team or work stream, so you have an advocate even when your supervisor is not one.

My caveat: sponsors find you. They are attaching their name to yours, so they will not do it just because you asked. Learn what they care about. Make their life easier. Help them hit their KPIs and goals. The one sponsor who stands out in my own career showed up because I was doing those things, and it took time.

4. Ask once more than feels comfortable

Remember my recruiter? If he had not had that $10,000, he would have said, “No, you can have the five.” Look for those signals. They are there, and you will never see them if you do not ask.

Meg added that at the end of a long interview process you are very likely one of the top one or two candidates, so you hold more power than you think. Money is more than base salary, too. A signing bonus and a moving bonus are both on the table. If you want my step by step for the ask itself, here is the SNAP method for salary negotiation I teach, and my friends at HER Collective broke down negotiation skills for women in the age of AI.

And in my experience, staying put usually means the normal 3 to 5 percent increase. I don't want you to think that you need to leave to find out what you are worth. Just start having conversations this year, inside and outside your company, so you know your number.

5. If you lead people, fix the system you control

If you manage a team or have a seat at the compensation table, Meg gave us the playbook. Write down your company's compensation philosophy: what you believe about money and about what your employees are worth. Use salary bands. Audit your pay data by gender and race every year and correct what you find. Use bonus season as a chance to correct inequities.

Then hold the line. Here is the problem I see. Companies build bands, then they get in a pickle and really need a role filled. Bob wants $200K, so somebody says “just give it to Bob,” and Sally ends up with the short end of the stick. Or the audit gets done and then shelved because fixing it would hit the bottom line. A band only works when leaders are held accountable to it.

How AI Fits Into Your Next Pay Conversation

Meg and I talked about AI too, and she said women need to be using this tool. She is seeing women afraid to use it at work for fear of getting in trouble. I wrote about that fear in Women Are Afraid to Use AI at Work. Here’s What That Fear Is Protecting.

For your pay, AI can do a lot of the prep work. Whatever tool you use (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini), you can ask it to turn your messy list of wins into a one-page summary with numbers. You can ask it to draft the exact words for asking about the band. You can ask it to play the hiring manager so you can rehearse your counter out loud until your voice stops shaking.

Then check every salary figure it gives you against real job postings and published ranges, because AI can sound very sure of itself about money. Your number should come from your receipts and real data.

What I Want You to Take From This

The gender pay gap is getting better for some women and worse for others, and the women who are paid the least are falling further behind. That is a system problem, and you did not create it.

Your piece of it starts with one question in the interview, one list of receipts, and one ask that feels a little bigger than comfortable. Nothing changes until you do.

This is the work we do together inside HER Collective. It is the room where you find out what everyone else asked for. We meet live every week for group coaching, we bring in experts once a month for masterclasses on topics like negotiation, and hands-on AI training is built in. If you want to practice the ask before you have to make it for real, come read about what is included and see if it is your room. We saved you a seat.

I am cheering you on.

Erica

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the gender pay gap getting worse in 2026?

It depends on the measure and on who you are. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2026 that women working full time, year round earned 83.9 percent of what men earned in 2025, up from 80.6 percent. The Economic Policy Institute found the hourly gap widened slightly, to 18.6 percent in 2025, and Black and Hispanic women are still paid the least compared with white men.

What should I ask in an interview so I am not underpaid?

Ask, “What is the band for this pay or for this job?” and where people with your experience usually land in it. Ask before you name a number, bring receipts of your results, and remember that signing and moving bonuses can be negotiated too.

Is the pay gap a glass ceiling or a sticky floor?

In my Sticky Floors vs. Glass Ceilings framework, it is both. Lowball offers, unequal bonuses and unpaid leave are glass ceilings, because they are built into the system. The fear of asking is a sticky floor, and that is the part you can start working on today.

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.