Women staffers working in President Trump’s administration earn about 63 cents for every dollar male staffers make, according to an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. That means that, since Trump has taken office, the gender pay gap among White House staffers has more than tripled, from about 11 percent under President Obama to 37 percent under Trump.
The data comes from the White House’s annual report to Congress, which was released Friday, and which shows the salary of each employee. To calculate the gender pay gap, economist Mark Perry compared the median salary of male staffers ($115,000) to the median salary for female staffers ($72,650). (It’s worth noting that other outlets initially reported a smaller pay gap, but as Perry points out, their numbers were incorrectly based on mean rather than median salaries.)
As the Washington Post reports, that 37-percent gap is more than double the national 17-percent gender pay gap, and it’s wider than the national gender pay gap in 1980.
The huge disparity in Trump’s White House is mostly because, as Perry notes, the vast majority of high-paying positions are held by men — of the top 101 highest-paid employees there, almost 75 percent are dudes. (Under Obama, it was just 52 percent.) In contrast, of the 102 lowest-paid employees, almost 60 percent are women.
While it’s true that — aside from bragging on his hiring practices while overseeing a construction company — Trump hasn’t said much about the gender pay gap, his daughter has been much more vocal. “#EqualPayDay is a reminder that women deserve equal pay for equal work,” she tweeted back in April. “We must work to close the gender pay gap!” Which is nice and all, but considering the data, she should probably start at home.
