The gender pay gap among college graduates is actually growing

Wage gap is actually growing for college grads.

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published 21 April 2016

At least among the college educated, the wage gap certainly doesn't seem to be going anywhere. A new report published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Thursday reveals that, actually, it's growing.

"Young male college graduates earned 8.1 percent more in 2016 than in 2000, while young female college graduates earned 6.8 percent less than in 2000," Elise Gould, senior economist at EPI and one of the report's authors, said. That translates to college-educated men earning $20.94 an hour and college-educated women earning just $16.58 per hour. That difference adds up to a whopping difference of $8,000 over the course of a year.

Gould thinks this gap might have to do with the fact that men in higher positions are pulling up the salaries of men below them, while women's salaries tend to lag further behind men's the further up they climb on the career ladder. She dismissed the notion that women are choosing lower-paying jobs, or that they're picking majors that lead to less profitable careers. "It still remains a fact that even within occupations, even within let's say finance, women are making less than men," Gould said. "So some of it is because of the major or occupation that somebody chose, but those could also be driven by discrimination at younger ages."