Party Like It's 2152

Only 136 More Years Until Women Earn As Much As Men

Only 136 more years to go. Photo: Tetra Images/Getty Images

Let’s grab celebratory drinks sometime in the year 2152, because that’s when the gender pay gap will finally close, according to a new report.

That’s right, us women only need to wait 136 more years until we make as much money as men, according to Bloomberg. “The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap,” a report published Thursday by the American Association of University Women, revealed that in 2015, women working full-time in the U.S. were paid, on average, 20 percent less than men.

At the rate the pay gap has narrowed between 1960 and 2015, women were expected to earn as much as their male counterparts by 2059. However, the report noted, if progress continues at the slow rate it’s been at since 2001, pay equality won’t be happening anytime soon.

The U.S. civilian workforce included almost 149 million workers in 2015: 53 percent men and 47 percent women. Men and women “tend to work in different kinds of jobs,” according to the report. Women are “disproportionately represented” in education, administrative support, and health-care jobs, while men are similarly represented in construction, maintenance, and production and transportation jobs.

“Even though a pay gap exists in nearly every occupational field, jobs traditionally associated with men tend to pay better than traditionally female-dominated jobs that require the same level of skill,” the report said.

The report suggested that increasing the number of women working in traditionally male fields “will likely improve wages for women,” but it won’t completely eliminate the pay gap. “Women in male-dominated jobs such as computer programming still face a pay gap compared with their male counterparts, even though women in such jobs may be paid higher salaries than women in traditionally female fields are paid,” the report said.

Therefore, the report noted, the pay gap is “real, it’s persistent, and it’s undermining the economic security of American women and their families.”

See you in 2152!

Only 136 More Years Until Women Earn As Much As Men