Report: Women, minorities working for New York City earn less

Women and racial minorities working for New York City earned about 84 cents for every dollar taken home by the city’s white and male employees, according to a City Council report using data through 2021.

The pay gap nearly vanished for employees with the same job title, but citywide, women and people of color tended to concentrate in jobs that pay less than those occupied by their white male colleagues, and to work in agencies where median pay was lower. Much of the pay disparity was attributable to low pay received by employees who were both women and minorities.

To improve pay equity, the report recommends expanding the Civil Service pipeline, hiring municipal career counselors and collecting better information about workplace culture and perceived barriers to promotion.

Amaris Cockfield, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, said in an email the mayor had taken “numerous steps to dramatically close the pay gap women of color still face,” including signing legislation requiring employers in the city to post a salary range with all job postings and launching Women Forward NYC, a program to connect women to professional development and higher-paying jobs.

Uneven distribution of workers by race and gender across occupations, a phenomenon the report’s authors called “occupational segregation,” was widespread at city agencies that collectively employ close to 300,000 people. The lowest-paying agencies, like the Department of Social Services or the Department of Probation, with median annual salaries of $54,100 and $57,903 respectively, tended to have the highest portion of female or minority employees.

The best-paying agencies, like the FDNY or the Department of Technology and Innovation, with median salaries of $92,073 and $95,000 respectively, tended to be those with the lowest portion of female and minority employees.

Similar results could be seen within some career ladders, where higher-paying roles within an agency tended to be predominantly held by white and male employees, while lower-paying roles tended to be held by more female and minority employees, according to the report. At the NYPD, for example, in 2021 — the last year for which the report had data — 80% of police officers were men and 43% were white, but 90% of captains were men, 66% of them white.

The report was based on data collected under the city’s 2019 pay equity law that did not require Department of Education data to be supplied to the Council. The law has since been amended so Department of Education data will be sent to the City Council going forward. Including data from the city Education Department's many women teachers would likely have cut the gender pay gap, the report’s authors said.

In an email, Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said a “promotion pipeline” into uniformed ranks for its lower-paid civilian staffers, like traffic enforcement agents or administrative aides, would help address pay disparities. That pipeline, Hendry added, should be accompanied by legislation allowing those with some kinds of prior city service to buy back pension time upon becoming police officers.

Those civilian titles “are a valuable pipeline for some of our most talented and diverse recruits,” Hendry said in a statement. “That’s why we’re seeking additional incentives to keep some of those internal recruits within the NYPD, instead of jumping to another law enforcement agency with better benefits.”

Representatives for the union representing city firefighters could not be reached for comment.

In an interview, Vico Fortier, staff attorney for the Brooklyn-based Gender Equality Law Center, said the report’s findings suggested that laws forbidding discrimination in hiring were insufficient.

“There are issues of implicit bias that cause women, gender minorities and people of color to face additional barriers in the workplace,” Fortier said.