Worst Paying US Cities for Women in Tech Industry

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Jobs in the tech industry require subjective skill sets and abilities, depending on the scope of work. Ideally, qualified employees are compensated accordingly without regard to any other factor. In reality, however, that is not always the case, according to data shared by Business Insider.

Pay gap information was collected and compiled by Comparably, a salary-comparison website that tracks a number of statistics based on employee skill sets and compensation. The company recently released data gathered from a survey of over 10,000 employees in the tech industry and analyzed the gender pay gap with respect to several categories, including region.

Gender pay gap by city for tech jobs Comparably

The data revealed that when it comes to women who work in technology, geographic location makes a big difference in compensation disparity. There are a number of cities that show room for improvement on gender pay gap in the tech industry. The worst offender, though, is Atlanta, where women earn on average $43,000 less per year than men, representing a gap of 72 percent. Minneapolis and Washington D.C. were next in line with a pay gap of 52 and 51 percent, respectively. Rounding out the top five worst cities were Chicago at 45 percent and Austin at 41 percent.

This article is part of our continuing series, <em>Women With Byte</em>

Women With Byte looks at the many contributions women have made to technology past and present, the hurdles they faced (and overcame), and the foundations for the future they’ve laid for the next generations.

There were cities on the list that performed markedly better based on pay gap, but even so, a gap still existed. Salt Lake City had the smallest pay gap for women working in the tech industry at 10 percent. Dallas is next on the list at 15 percent, followed by San Francisco at 20 percent. The top five best cities based on gender pay gap were Denver at 24 percent followed by New York and Portland, which tied at 25 percent.

It’s important to note that these reported pay gaps were based on median pay, and represent women well into their careers. The data shows that younger women just starting a career in technology experience a much larger pay gap than the ones represented by median pay. In that situation, finding an opportunity in a city with a smaller pay gap could be even more important in order to earn a higher wage.

In a perfect world, candidates should be able to chase opportunities in any geography without consideration of a possible pay gap. Unfortunately, the current data shows that companies in some U.S. cities provide men in the tech industry with higher annual salaries than their female counterparts.