Men's Group

When the BLS data figure of 23% is quoted, people are talking about the raw weekly earnings for full time (>35 hours per week) employees by gender. This data set equates the following:

Person A who works 35 hours = Person B working 60 hours
Person A who works 0 hours of overtime = Person B who works 10 hours of overtime
Person A who has 0 years on the job experience = Person B who has 20 years on the job experience
Person A who works in industry Y = Person B who works in industry Z
Person A who is non-union employee = Person B who is union represented employee

On and on it goes.

In other words, the BLS data set is only concerned with two things:

1) Do you work > 35 hours in a week?
2) Were you born with a penis?

So long as #1 is met, #2 determines which column the data falls into.

This is not apples to apples and is of quite limited value in any objective discussion of gender pay equity.