- Latina Equal Pay Day is December 8.
- That means it takes Latinas almost all of 2022 to make what non-Hispanic white men made in just 2021.
Even though the year of 2022 is almost over, Latinas finally caught up to non-Hispanic white men's pay in 2021 alone on December 8.
"Equal pay is essential to reaching gender equality," Sheryl Sandberg, founder of Lean In and former Meta chief operating officer, said in a statement. "The fact that Latina women must work 342 days into 2022 to catch up to what men earned in 2021 speaks to how we value their time, experience, and knowledge."
According to a recent median pay analysis from the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) using Census Bureau 2021 data, working Latinas made 54 cents for every dollar non-Hispanic white men who worked made.
With December 8 being this year's Latina Equal Pay Day, Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women's Law Center, said that the fact it takes this long for Latinas to catch up is "devastating."
"They're gonna work until they die and they still won't catch up," Tucker told Insider.
According to the pay analysis from NWLC, a gap of almost $30,000 a year between Latinas and non-Hispanic white men working full-time, year-round means a gap of over a million dollars when assuming a 40-year career.
"We talk about equal pay day as the catch up day, but in reality, she's never going to catch up," Tucker said.
NWLC's analysis of Census Bureau data show full-time, year-round working Latinas earned 57% of non-Hispanic white men's median earnings.
That means an overall lifetime earnings loss for Latinas working full-time, year-round of almost $1.2 million, which can have serious consequences. For one, Tucker said that a Latina's "retirement is then compromised."
"She needs to stretch fewer dollars over more years because she's paid the least and among the groups that lives the longest," Tucker said.
It also "means that Latinas are unable to invest in themselves," Tucker said. In other words, they may not be able to purchase a home or return to school if they wanted to according to Tucker.
The pay gap for Latinas has been exacerbated by the economic tumult of the last three years amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Tucker said that Latinas were not only working in frontline jobs — and overrepresented in these roles — but also said they were "overrepresented in low-paid jobs, which we saw a huge loss of in 2020," such as the massive job loss in the still recovering leisure and hospitality industry.
Tucker said that "the lost earnings to the wage gap meant that Latinas didn't have the savings to fall back on to weather the storm."
One way companies can address the pay gap and equity in the workplace is to make sure Latinas are in leadership roles. Tucker said companies should make sure the "people that they're hiring at higher levels and decision making roles are a diverse set of folks." Internal promotions of underrepresented groups could help as well. However, women aren't being promoted at the same level as men.
According to research on promotions from entry level roles to manager positions in LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company's 2022 Women in the Workplace report, 87 women are promoted for every 100 men promoted. For Latinas, 75 are promoted for every 100 men promoted.
"Latinas ask for promotions and raises at similar rates to white men, they're just not getting them," Sandberg said in a statement.
Outside of work positions and leadership roles, Tucker said unions could be another way to address the pay gap and help Latinas' earnings. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median weekly earnings for union workers was $194 higher than the median $975 earned by non-union workers.
Overall, there isn't one solution to close the pay gap, as Tucker said there are "multipronged" solutions.