According to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2023, women make, on average, $.83 for each dollar a man makes.

It’s a significant step back to where the gender pay gap was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Though talking to the academic X's and O's, as well as advocates for change, not all hope is lost.

Suzanne D'Amico, WNY Women's Foundation director of development, helps fight every day to close the gap.

"So you want to know what contributes to the pay gap,” D'Amico said. “Occupational segregation. Women predominantly take jobs that pay less.” 

Some trends in the 2023 Census point to women leaving the workforce and re-entering with lower paying jobs, although D’Amico hasn't seen that firsthand.

"Women were going to work. They were physically leaving the home," she said. "They're your essential workers. They're your nurses. They're your teachers." 

Culturally and systemically, there are other things that have derailed professional development.

"Women are taking time off to have children. They're also taking longer in school," D'Amico said. "They have more debt and they're investing less in their long-term financial health."

"Depending on where you live in the United States, you're going to see very different numbers in all of this," Fred Floss, economics and finance professor at SUNY Buffalo State, said while looking at the map of the Census Bureau data.

Floss has his students study the gap yearly.

"It's not a very big change, but it's something that concerns all of us to say we thought we were doing better,” said Floss. “Maybe we're not."

Baked into the questions that come into directing this data, 'what is fair pay?'

"Different jobs pay in different ways. Some have lower wages but higher benefits. Others have very flexible schedules that may have lower salaries," Floss said. "Is a nurse supposed to make the same as a salesperson, for example? Well, male salespersons in a lot of cases make more than nurses. That's a moral question, not an economic question.”

One thing both Floss and D’Amico can agree on?

"The salary transparency is a huge piece of fixing this," said D'Amico.

"If men are making more and women don't find out about it, there's no way to try to fight this and correct it," said Floss. 

Advocates and leadership in the workforce could go a long way with room for improvement across the board.

"Women make a lot of these spending decisions in their households. So the more money that comes into the household, the more money that is flowing back into the economy," D'Amico said. "If women are making more, they're investing more into the community and they're taking less from assistance and programs, so there's more money to go around."

This is impactful, as the year prior, 2022, the same gap was at its all-time lowest. It's going to take much more than just a little raise here and there to address this. Programs that highlight better employers in this facet can also go a long way, but there's big cultural and systemic issues companies and advocates need to work on if there's another rally to be had.