New Research Sheds Light On America's LGBTQI+ Wage Gap

Forbes

5 hours ago

People who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual earn—on average—around 85% less every year than those who don't, new research shows.
An analysis of the U.S income levels of 3,360 people aged 18 and over—conducted by the Center for American Progress in collaboration with NORC, a non-partisan research group at the University of Chicago—found that an average LGBTQI+ household in 2024 earned nearly $12,600 less than an average non-LGBTQI+ household.
Individuals identifying as transgender and nonbinary faced an even bigger income shortfall, with those households bringing in around $24,800 less than non-LGBTQI+ households annually. The research also found that about a quarter of all LGBTQI+ people reported experiencing discrimination in the workplace last year, compared to about 16% of non-LGBTQI+ people.
'While our data on its own can't explain the forces that create these wage gaps, we know the intersecting dynamics of sexism, racism, and discrimination likely play a key role,' commented Sara Estep, economist for the Women's Initiative at CAP.
Estep and Haley Norris, a policy analyst for LGBTQI+ Policy at CAP, also noted that the Trump administration's efforts to defund agencies tasked with enforcing existing nondiscrimination laws would likely exacerbate these existing inequalities.
'When enforcement against discrimination is lacking, it harms LGBTQI+ folks and threatens their lifelong economic stability,' said Norris. 'People with intersecting marginalized identities experience worse workplace discrimination and tend to suffer larger disparities in household income. The Trump administration's rollback of nondiscrimination laws is going to hit these people the hardest,' Norris added.
Estep and Norris, who co-authored a report accompanying the research findings, said that while some of the pay gap is attributable to outright discrimination, other factors likely play a role, too. One example is age. The median age of LGBTQI+ survey respondents was 33, while the median age of non-LGBTQI+ respondents was 48. Just 7 percent of LGBTQI+ adult respondents were 65 and over. Generally, Estep and Norris noted, income grows with age until retirement. That means that if younger, working-age people have a higher propensity to openly report being LGBTQI+, their incomes likely skew lower as a direct result of these differences in age.