Joe Biden likes to pontificate about equal pay, but his White House is reportedly paying female employees less on average than male employees. It seems the eeeevil patriarchy is alive and well at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Women – working full-time, year-round – are paid 84 cents for every dollar paid to men. Those disparities are more pronounced for women of color and women with disabilities.
On Equal Pay Day, we call attention to an injustice that undermines women’s economic security. pic.twitter.com/qRJYHLV4XG
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 14, 2023
The Daily Signal reported Wednesday on White House data analyzed by Mark Perry, an economist and a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Even as Joe Biden calls for equal pay for women, his White House isn’t living up to its own standards.
The White House’s median salary for men in 2023 was $105,000, while women’s median salary was $84,000, according to the White House data analyzed by Perry. The White House asserted in June that women made 83 cents for every dollar a man made in 2022 and alleged that women are not paid, at least in part, the same as men for equal work, according to a blog post from the White House commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act…
The 20% discrepancy in pay at the White House is attributable to the number of female staffers in entry-level positions, which are typically paid less than more senior-level positions, according to Perry. The top third of employees in terms of pay at the White House are 63.9% male and make between $168,000 and $183,000, while the bottom two-thirds are 65.7% female and make between $51,500 and $55,000.
It’s important to note here, the White House aside, that pay gaps between the sexes don’t necessarily prove sexism. Women have traditionally been more likely to take time off for reasons such as maternity leave or sick leave (though that might be shifting now), for example. And as noted above, many women are in entry-level positions versus higher-paying positions at the White House; that situation naturally occurs at other places, too, based on who applies and is qualified for a job. The reason this report looks bad for Biden, however, is because he himself loves to lecture others about hiring more women and paying them the same. It’s do as I say, not as I do.
Charlotte, I couldn’t agree more.
Women lose thousands of dollars each year, and hundreds of thousands over a lifetime, because of gender and racial wage gaps.
I’m committed to building an economy where my daughters have the same rights and opportunities as my sons. pic.twitter.com/0vholYMTaR
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 14, 2023
Perry made a similar observation to The Daily Signal. “So what is hypocritical is that the White House constantly lectures the country about the gender pay gap, about 17% at the national level in recent years, and promotes the false narrative that 100% of the gender differences in median earnings are due to discrimination against women in the workforce without ever considering the dozens of factors that contribute to and explain the difference in median salaries between men and women,” he said.
Not that this is the first time the Biden administration has been called out for its “pay gap” hypocrisy, nor is he the only Democrat president caught with a pay gap between the sexes. PJ Media’s Matt Margolis reported in 2021 that the male-female pay gap at the Biden White House was even more than that under President Barack Obama. Yet Obama and Biden love to broadcast their supposed dedication to women’s rights.
Perry explained the “pay gap” further, “My analysis of White House salaries shows how men and women can get paid the same when working side-by-side doing the same job (which is the case at the WH every year), but you can still have an overall gender earnings gap comparing median salaries that has nothing to do with gender discrimination but can be explained by the multitude of other factors that contribute to earnings differentials between any two groups, including hours worked, continuous years of experience, the type of job, the relative danger or safety of different jobs, education, motherhood, marriage, family considerations, commute time, more men in senior positions at the WH vs. more women in entry-level positions, etc.”
But while simplistic male-versus-female pay comparisons can provide misleading data, it’s precisely this misleading data that the Biden White House uses to lecture other employers about the “gender pay gap.” Joe Biden is a hypocrite—as if we didn’t all know that already.
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