White House gender pay gap widens to 20 percent despite Biden pledge

Karine Jean-Pierre, a Biden spokeswoman, and eight other women are listed with a salary of $180,000. Photo: ANNABEL GORDON/MEGA

According to an analysis of the annual payroll report, the White House has a 20 percent pay gap between men and women.

The names, titles and salaries of more than 440 employees were disclosed in its report to Congress, despite Joe Biden's earlier focus on pay disparities among other employers.

The median income for a man in the presidential office is $105,000 (£82,352), while the median income for a woman is just $84,000 (£65,882). Biden earns $400,000 a year.

Mark Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has found that women in the White House earn 80 cents for every dollar paid to male employees.

Mr. Perry, who has studied White House wages for years, previously found that the pay gap was 37% under Donald Trump in 2017 and nearly 11% under Barack Obama in 2016.

Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to address the gender pay gap at the White House's Equal Pay Day. earlier this year. Photo: PATRICK SEMANSKI/AP

In its own analysis, The Wall Street Journal noted that the reason for the pay gap in the Biden White House was the «composition effect».

Although there are more women working in the White House than men, there are more women than 269 to 179 in low-paid positions, the newspaper notes.

Some women are among the highest paid in the presidential team. Karine Jean-Pierre, a Biden spokeswoman, and eight other women are listed with a $180,000 (£141,176) salary.

«More structurally sexist»

These numbers contradict Biden's claims of pay parity.

The President celebrated «National Equal Pay Day» at the White House in March, saying he was «working to eliminate» pay inequality.

«I call on all Americans to recognize the full value of women's skills and their significant contribution to the workforce, acknowledge the injustice of pay inequality, and join forces to achieve equal pay,» he said at the time.

An editorial in The Wall Street Journal ironically noted that, according to the White House's own analysis, these numbers were slightly higher than the national labor force average in 2022.

The White House Council of Economic Advisors calculated that that among all full-time workers, a woman earned only 83 cents for every dollar paid to a man.

“If Mr. Biden pays only 80 cents on the dollar, does this mean that his White House is three percent more structurally sexist than the labor market as a whole?» asked the Wall Street Journal.