Wages ($: Fill & Download for Free

I’m a data scientist.Wage gap advocates say women make “72 cents for every dollar.” This statistic does mean something but not necessarily what people think it means. It is imperative to understand a statistic before you apply it.The statistic does not imply:That women make less, per hour, than menThat women are paid less for the same workThat women face employment or advancement discriminationThis rudimentary figure was obtained by totaling the earnings of men and women and calculating the difference.But there are a myriad of reasons that men could have higher total earnings than women that have nothing to do with sex discrimination. Men could work more hours than women (which they do). They could be more aggressive about negotiating for raises (which they are). They could choose higher paying careers (which they do). They could choose dangerous or labor-intensive jobs that women refuse to do (which happens).As these other variables become clear, it begins to erode the story of sex discrimination. Erode, not eliminate. We can’t say how much (if any) of the gap is due to sex discrimination. However, we are confident it’s not 28%. The gap closes to 5–8% after considering other factors, meaning that sex discrimination can (at most) explain 5–8% of the difference.[1] In other words, 95 cents on the dollar, not 72 cents. But even this is uncertain. There’s no evidence to suggest that the remaining gap is due to sex discrimination.The bottom line is that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions when you see data. You have to investigate the methodology used to obtain the figures to correctly interpret it. Any data expert worth his or her salt can speak to that. I would be cautious about any extrapolations, especially on such a simple measure.Update: For the purposes of my answer, pay discrimination means “less pay for the same work.” This is the widely accepted definition.Footnotes[1] What’s the real gender pay gap?

Economics 101.Prices are set by supply and demand. Not labor costs.There are actually far fewer businesses than you might imagine that would even consider raising prices if the minimum wage was increased. Those would be some specific industries like restaurants and retail, and even then most of the big chains would not need or want to raise prices due to competition.There is little to no evidence that suggests that raising minimum wages leads to price increases.FYI, my local McDonalds has a $14 minimum wage and a Big Mac is $3.99

Ideally as an employer you want to pay your employees as little as possible while, at the same time, all other employers pay as much as possible so that *their* employees can afford your goods and services.What actually happens however, is a race to the bottom. Everyone pays as little as possible, because they have no choice.That’s competition. If you don’t reduce your costs, your competitor will.The only thing stopping wages falling to a bowl of rice a day is the minimum wage. Or Unions if you live in a country with Unions.Denmark has Unions and no minimum wage.