Orange County's Gender Wage Gap Worsens

ORANGE COUNTY, CA - A state audit finds a significant and growing gap in the average pay for men and women working for several large California counties with women in Orange County faring the worst.

Women in Orange County’s workforce made on average 73 percent of what their male counterparts made last year, down from the 2011 fiscal year, according to the audit released Tuesday by the California State Auditor.

The audit also looked at the pay gap in Los Angeles, Fresno and Santa Clara counties between the 2011 and 2015 fiscal years. In each of the four counties, the gap widened slightly over the five-year period examined, but the trend was most marked in Los Angeles County. In LA, women make 76 percent of what men bring in, down from a high of 80 percent in 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The auditors noted that the pay gap generally appeared to be due to women being concentrated in lower-paid positions, rather than in disparities between men and women doing the same jobs. They found that women generally made up a majority of full-time county workers, but were outnumbered by men in classifications where average pay was more than $160,000, according to The Times.

For instance, the report noted that only four of 622 fire captains in Los Angeles County, and fewer than 10 percent of sheriff’s deputies in Orange County, were women. Fire captains in Los Angeles made on average almost $245,000 a year, and Orange County sheriff’s deputies made more than $210,000 on average.

City News Service; Shutterstock