March 25 marks National Women’s Equal Pay Day for 2025, the day that highlights the number of days full-time, year-round, median-income earning employed females would need to work into the new year in order to earn the same income as median-income earning males from the previous year. Below are several facts to know about women’s pay in the U.S. and the Granite State.

Granite State Women Earned 76 Percent of What New Hampshire Men Were Paid

Nationally, women earned 83 percent of what men earned in 2023, according to the most recently available data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. The median male earnings for men working full-time were $62,000 compared to women’s $51,600.

In New Hampshire, women working full-time, year-round earned 76 percent of what men earned in 2023, according to the most recently available data through the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Full-time, year-round working men had median earnings of $75,512 compared to women’s earnings of $57,240. Of the 25 occupational categories described in 2023 New Hampshire Employment Security data, there were only three in which women had higher median earnings than men (life, physical, and social science occupations; community and social services occupations; and construction and extraction occupations). The pay gap for median earnings between men and women were the largest in the following New Hampshire occupational categories: Legal occupations ($114,104 vs. $61,752), arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations ($100,282 vs. $62,828), and management occupations ($112,373 vs. $77,160).

For Granite Staters of Color, the Gender Pay Gap is Even Wider

The pay gap for women of color can be considerably larger than for women in aggregate. Due to data limitations, earnings data for Granite Staters cannot be disaggregated by race and sex; however, white, non-Hispanic Granite Staters had higher average estimated per capita incomes during the 2019 to 2023 period ($52,379) than Native American and Alaska Native residents ($40,877), individuals identifying as another race not listed in the survey ($37,582), Black or African American Granite Staters ($34,730), individuals identifying as of two or more races ($34,262), Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander residents ($32,400), and Hispanic or Latino individuals of any race ($32,778). Asian Granite Staters were the only non-white group that earned a higher mean annual income ($60,448) than white, non-Hispanic residents. Relative to these data, the U.S. Census Bureau defines race and ethnicity separately, with ethnicity describing whether an individual identifies as Hispanic or Latino or not.

Nationally, the median earnings pay gap for full-time, year round workers existed across all races and ethnicities in 2023 including for white, non-Hispanic workers ($71,994 vs. $57,291), Black or African American workers ($51,266 vs. $46,788), Native American and Alaska Native workers ($47,841 to $41,939), Asian workers ($86,988 vs. $70,435), Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander workers ($51,699 vs. $46,932), workers who identified as a race not provided in the Census survey ($46,799 vs. $40,252), workers identifying as two or more races ($53,456 vs. $46,958), and Hispanic or Latino workers ($49,772 vs. $41,743).

Labor Force Participation Rate for Granite State Women is 83.3 Percent

Based on preliminary data from 2024, the labor force participation rate among Granite State women ages 25-54 (83.3 percent) was around 7.8 percentage points lower than the rate for men of the same age (91.1 percent). In addition to experiencing lower participation rates, women comprise a smaller proportion of New Hampshire’s total labor force. In 2024, men age 16 and older encompassed 53.0 percent of the state’s labor force, while women of the same age made up a smaller 46.9 percent. Despite this, women held 49.7 percent of private jobs based in New Hampshire, according to early 2024 data. This suggests that Granite State women may be less likely to commute out of state for work and may be more likely to work multiple jobs, including part time jobs that typically do not offer health insurance or retirement benefits.

Women are Overrepresented in Low-Wage Caregiving Roles

Pay gaps by gender and race may exist for a variety of reasons, including the higher likelihood of women and people of color to engage in unpaid or low-paying caregiving roles. According to data from the first quarter of 2024, women represented an estimated 90.8 percent of workers in New Hampshire’s child care sector, and approximately 86.4 percent of the state’s home health services workforce. According to the most recent data available, women in caregiving occupations are commonly paid wages far below the state’s median hourly wage, which was $24.03 in 2023. In 2023, the median hourly wages for early care and education workers ($15.62), home health and personal care aides ($16.55), preschool teachers, excluding special education teachers ($18.10), and nursing assistants ($21.13) were all below the statewide median number ($24.03). In addition to having lower wages, women in these occupations may be more likely to work inconsistent hours depending on workload demands, including changing schedules and varying shift lengths, impacting the number of hours worked and, as a result, total wages earned.

The high price of both child care and older adult care in New Hampshire may mean that more women are staying home to care for family members due to financial pressures. According to averaged data collected from January to September 2024, approximately 6.0 percent of Granite Staters (22,300 people) reported that they were not engaged in the state’s labor force because they were caring for children or an older adult. National data suggest that as many as 12 percent of parents are caring for an older adult in addition to children. In addition to those out of the labor force entirely, more women may have also reduced their total hours worked to account for family caretaking needs. Though these data are not broken down by gender, other key research suggests that women spend more time engaged in unpaid caregiving than men.