Wage Outliers

Men are disproportionately at the top of the wage scale in most industries. But there are a handful of industries where women are the wage outliers. Those industries tend to have lower wages overall, however. 

Amanda Rohrer examined outlier earners by industry in the latest issue of Trends magazine. She found that 71 percent of Minnesotans are employed in industries where men surpass women at the top of the wage scale. Only 7.8 percent of workers are employed in industries where women surpass men as top wage earners. 

In industries where women surpass men as outlier earners, the overall median wage is only $11 per hour, and the gap between the median wage for women ($11.02 per hour) and the median for men ($11.10 per hour) is small. 

In industries where men surpass women as outlier earners, the median wage overall is $21.25 per hour, or nearly double the wage for industries where women do disproportionality well as outliers. The gender gap here is greater, too. The median wage for women is $20.03 per hour compared with $23.31 per hour for men. 

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