Exactly what you could be doing with a 19 percent larger income every year

anwar danjaji

March 31, 2017 1:26 PM

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the gender pay gap—and its date is no accident.

What you could do with a 19% larger income.

The wage gap really adds up.

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the gender pay gap—and its date is no accident. April 4, 2017 symbolizes how far into the next year women must work to earn what men earned in just the year before, according to the National Committee on Equal Pay. (Basically, men could sit on their butts for the first quarter of 2017 and will still earn at least as much as you by the end of the year.)

According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last year, women who worked full-time in wage and salaried jobs in 2015 had a median weekly salary of $726, or $37,752 per year.

Men, on the other hand, had a median weekly salary of $895 or $46,540 annually —so overall, we’re earning just 81 percent of what men do. In cold, hard cash, that’s a difference of $8,788 we’re missing out on every single year.

Note—this doesn't even factor how much less on average women of color make compared to white men and white women.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, black and Hispanic female workers, both full and part-time, earn far less per hour than full and part-time white male workers (65 cents and 58 cents on the dollar, respectively).

In case you’re not sufficiently enraged by that lovely fact, here’s a breakdown of all of the extra things you could pay for in a year if the wage gap didn’t exist:

Six months of rent for an apartment in Austin, Texas (you know you've always wanted better access to live music and queso, right?), according to current price estimates on RentJungle.
Round-trip flights for you and eight of your closest friends from New York City to Honolulu, according to current prices on Kayak.
A down payment on a Jeep Wrangler Sport, plus 17 months of car payments.
2,407 grande lattes at Starbucks.
146 trips to the grocery store, if you're an average single female gal, according to the USDA.
29 months of student loan payments (given that the average graduate pays upwards of $300 per month in student loans, according to
199 haircuts. (The average haircut for women nationwide costs $44, according to data from Square.) Yeah. 199 of them.
49 pairs of designer jeans at $179 a pop.

Can we be done with this already? According to the American Association of University Women, at the rate we're currently going, we won't break even until 2152.

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anwar danjaji