Pay Gap US Calculator - US Sex and Race Pay Gap

A pay gap calculator is a free US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) based tool that estimates what you would earn as the opposite sex in your race or ethnicity group, given your current annual salary. It uses 2019 median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers to scale your salary to the comparison group, and then shows the dollar amount and percentage of the pay gap.

• • Estimating your personal pay gap: Enter your sex, race or ethnicity, and current annual salary to see what the same job would pay a worker of the opposite sex in your demographic group.
• • Comparing pay gap by race and ethnicity: Switch the race/ethnicity dropdown to see how the gap changes for White, Black, Asian, Hispanic or Latino, and all full-time workers.
• • Salary negotiation preparation: Use the result as a data point when discussing compensation, with a sourced BLS ratio that you can share with a manager or recruiter.
• • Classroom and policy research: Plug in sample salaries to illustrate how the US pay gap differs across demographic groups for students, journalists, and policy work.

The calculator reflects the median, not the average, which is the mid-point of the earnings distribution for full-time workers. Half of the people in the group earn more than the median and half earn less, so the result is a useful central estimate rather than a fixed outcome for any individual.

You can use this pay gap calculator to compare a single salary to the BLS 2019 baseline, or to compare several salaries in the same race or ethnicity group to see how the dollar gap scales with income.

Once you see the pay gap percentage from this pay gap calculator, you can plan a closing raise with the Pay Raise Calculator to see how a percentage bump changes your take-home pay.

The pay gap calculator multiplies your annual salary by the ratio of the comparison group's median weekly earnings to your group's median weekly earnings, both pulled from the BLS 2019 report on women's earnings.

• userSex: The user's sex, used to pick the row in the BLS earnings table.
• userRace: Race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, used to pick the column in the BLS earnings table.
• annualSalary: The user's current annual salary in US dollars.
• weeklyUserEarnings: Median weekly earnings for the user's group from BLS 2019.
• weeklyComparisonEarnings: Median weekly earnings for the opposite-sex group in the same race row, from BLS 2019.

The dollar gap is the difference between the hypothetical salary and your current salary, while the pay gap percentage is the gap divided by your salary and multiplied by 100. A positive percentage means your group earns less than the comparison group, and a negative percentage means your group earns more.

All five race and ethnicity rows use the same scale so you can switch groups and see the gap move with the BLS 2019 ratios.

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2019 women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $821, equal to 81.5% of the $1,007 median for men.

If you need to convert the weekly BLS figures into an annualized number for comparison, the Annual Income Calculator handles weekly, monthly, and hourly inputs in one step.

Four concepts explain what the pay gap calculator measures and how to read the numbers.

These concepts come from the BLS 'Highlights of Women's Earnings' report, which is the most cited federal source for pay gap statistics in the United States.

Because the underlying BLS ratios change slowly, the Salary Inflation Calculator helps you adjust historical pay gap dollars to today's purchasing power for a fair comparison.

Follow these steps to compare your salary to the opposite sex in your race or ethnicity group.

1. 1 Choose your sex: Pick Female or Male from the first dropdown so the calculator can look up the right row in the BLS earnings table.
2. 2 Choose your race or ethnicity: Pick All, White, Black or African American, Asian, or Hispanic or Latino to match how BLS reports your group.
3. 3 Enter your annual salary: Type your current US annual salary in dollars, with no commas, and the results update as you type.
4. 4 Read the hypothetical salary: The first result line shows what someone of the opposite sex in the same race/ethnicity group would earn at your salary, scaled from BLS 2019 weekly earnings.
5. 5 Review the pay gap dollars and percent: Use the annual dollar gap and percent to quantify the difference, and the comparison weekly earnings line to see the BLS source value.
6. 6 Try different race or ethnicity options: Change the race/ethnicity dropdown to see how the gap changes for different groups while keeping the salary constant.

A woman who makes $55,000 a year and identifies as White can enter those values and see that the BLS 2019 ratios imply an equivalent male salary of about $67,800, an annual gap near $12,800, and a percentage of 23.3%.

Years of experience drive most individual pay, so after running your pay gap estimate, the Work Experience Calculator can translate your tenure into an expected salary step.

This pay gap calculator gives you a clear, BLS-sourced estimate of the US pay gap in dollars and percent, broken down by sex and race or ethnicity.

• • Personalized estimate: Combines your exact salary with the BLS 2019 ratios, so the result is tailored to your real situation rather than a national average alone.
• • Intersectional comparison: Lets you switch between five race and ethnicity groups to see how the pay gap changes by demographic, including the wider Asian gap and the narrower Black gap.
• • Dollar and percent output: Shows both the annual dollar amount and the percentage of the gap, so the result is easy to use in pay negotiations, articles, or classroom discussions.
• • Transparent BLS source: Uses the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2019 annual averages and links the citation, so the result is traceable to a federal data source.
• • Quick scenario testing: Recalculates in real time when you change the sex, race, or salary input, which is useful for comparing multiple scenarios in one session.

Because the calculator is web-based, you can run it on a phone during a meeting or on a desktop while you write a report. Resetting the form restores the defaults of Female, All full-time workers, and a $50,000 salary.

If you decide to apply for a higher-paying role after reviewing the gap, the CV Screening and Interview Time Calculator helps you plan how much recruiter time to budget for the search.

These factors shape the pay gap percentage and the dollar result, and they explain the calculator's limitations.

• • The calculator uses unadjusted medians for full-time workers and does not control for occupation, education, hours worked, experience, or location, so it should be read as a population-level estimate rather than a prediction for any one person.
• • The underlying ratios come from 2019 BLS data and are not updated live; more recent annual averages may shift the result slightly.

If you need an adjusted pay gap that controls for occupation and experience, the Department of Labor and the National Women's Law Center publish adjusted estimates that complement this calculator.

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the women's-to-men's earnings ratio for full-time wage and salary workers has remained in the 80 to 83 percent range since 2004.

According to U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires that men and women be given equal pay for equal work in the same establishment.

To sanity-check the opposite-sex salary against today's market, the Wage Calculator converts an annual figure back to hourly and weekly equivalents for the same job.