The Brief

Education does not solve the pay gap between men and women, data from the U.S. Census Bureau found, and the higher-paying the field, the greater the difference. That disparity is unsurprising to experts and advocates, who point to societal norms, policy shortcomings and inflexible working schedules as big parts of the problem.

The gender wage gap is the difference in median annual earnings of women compared to men, and, according to a report published by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, it has not changed much in the past 20 years. Pew found that in 2022, women earned 82 cents for every dollar a man earned, compared to 2002, when women earned 80 cents for every dollar a man earned.

The census data shows the gender wage gap persisting in every occupation, even if women make up the majority of workers. Although women make up the majority of social work, elementary education and family and consumer science degree holders, the small portion of men who do hold these degrees typically earn more than the women.

Women with degrees in higher-paying fields saw a larger difference in pay than those in lower-paying fields. For example, women with a social work degree earned $5,710 less than their male counterparts while women with an economics degree earned $22,550 less than a man with the same degree.

And the gap only widens when race and ethnicity are taken into account. Last year, Black and Hispanic women only earned 67.4% and 61.4% respectively of what white men earned, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

The idea that education is not enough to close the gender wage gap was echoed earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Labor, which found that the gap persisted at every level of educational attainment and remains even with women having more years of education than men. In fact, the gap worsens as women attain higher education. Data shows the median weekly earnings difference between men and women with less than a high school diploma is around $150, while the median weekly earnings among women with advanced degrees is around $450 less than their male counterparts.

Still, women have persisted in obtaining higher education and breaking into male-dominated fields. A report from Pew published last month found women occupy 35% of the top 10 highest paying jobs compared to 1980, when they only made up 13 percent of these occupations. The percentage of dentists who are women increased from 7% to 33%; 38% of physicians are women compared to 13% in 1980; the percentage of lawyers who are women jumped from 14% in 1980 to 40%.

The inroads women make in these fields start with the selection of an undergraduate major. For this first big step, Jessamyn Schaller, an associate professor of economics at Claremont McKenna College, says having women professors can make a huge difference.

“There’s studies that show women who have a female professor in their intro-level class in sort of STEM fields or in economics are more likely to choose that class as a major,” Schaller said. It’s something that she takes into consideration as an introductory economics professor. “It’s important to me that, when I teach intro, I teach it in a way that kind of shows my students how interesting it can be and try to be a role model for it,” she said. “And I definitely have had students who said, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I wanted to do this, but I took your class, and now I’m choosing it as a major,’ or ‘I’m going to double major.’ And that really means a lot to me.”

According to Rose Khattar, the director of economic analysis at the Center for American Progress, the gender wage gap is a systemic issue. The census data shows fields dominated by men are higher-paying than fields dominated by women, and Khattar points to societal biases of where men and women should work for causing this occupational segregation and impacting policy choices.

“Caregiving roles tend to be disproportionately performed by women in the home, historically, and so there’s this idea that then follows through into the paid labor market. So, you see more women are working in teaching, and more women are working in childcare or home health care or different aspects of the care economy. But those societal biases, to me, aren’t really the way that we should be allocating where people work,” Khattar explained.

Both Khattar and Schaller believe the right policies can be put in place to help tighten the gender wage gap. Khattar mentioned the lack of federal paid family and medical leave in the United States, noting that “means that there’s penalties associated financially with taking time off,” which impact women more than men. She also pointed to the Paycheck Fairness Act, which seeks to limit sex-based wage discrimination; developing pathways for women to enter high-paying jobs; and the Raise the Wage Act, which would set the federal minimum wage at $17 an hour.

“One of the biggest things that could be done is to increase the minimum wage — and that’s something that could be done at a state level and a federal level — because we know that women, particularly Black women and Latinas, are overrepresented in low-wage work,” she said. “That would really make inroads in listing off the quality of low wage occupations, which would, given the disproportionate amount of women who work in those jobs, that would be a huge step to closing the gender pay gap.”

Schaller is hopeful that the flexible working policies that were implemented to limit the spread of COVID-19 can still be practiced to better support working women. Her research observed that, during the height of the pandemic, college-educated women in careers were opting to work remotely, adjusting their working hours or leaving their jobs altogether to care for their children who were learning from home. But fewer dads were doing so.

“There’s still really a gap in the amount of housework and child care that people are doing. So, even in dual-earner households, women are doing a larger share of the housework and child care,” Schaller said.

Working during the pandemic proved flexible work could improve professional and financial outcomes for women.

“I’m hopeful that COVID may have changed things a little bit. We saw that COVID opened the door to more zoom calls and remote work possibilities, and a larger chunk of the labor force, including men, are now hoping to have more flexible work schedules to be able to work from home a few days a week,” she said. “I’m hopeful that that may have spurred some positive change on that front.”

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Immigration enforcement agents are inciting panic at California’s community colleges.

Santa Monica College said that one of its students was arrested and deported last May. Then in December, Santa Barbara City College said that federal immigration officers used their campus parking lot as a staging ground, prompting an uproar from community activists. 

Last month, the San Diego Community College District said ICE agents arrested a student on a public street that cuts through the urban campus and proceeded to chase another student up the steps of the school’s Arts and Humanities building.

Last Monday, federal agents arrested the father of a student in a campus parking lot at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, south of San Luis Obispo.

College presidents say they’re doing everything in their power to keep students safe and prevent federal immigration enforcement officers from coming on campus. But they admit that they have limited power in these situations.

“If ICE agents want to come and walk in the middle of campus, they can do that,” said Kevin Walthers, the president of Allan Hancock College.

State laws require colleges to notify students if immigration enforcement agents are on campus and agents must present a warrant before entering a "nonpublic” area in a school, such as a classroom or office building. But parking lots, quads and many other outdoor spaces are considered public.

By the time Walthers learned ICE agents had arrived at the campus parking lot, they were gone — the arrest happened in a matter of minutes. He said he never received a warrant and was only able to issue a notification to students and faculty after the arrest. The same was true in San Diego, said district Chancellor Gregory Smith.

President Donald Trump rescinded a longstanding policy that prevented immigration enforcement in “sensitive” locations, such as schools. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, which oversees the state’s 116 colleges, has been outspoken about protecting students without legal status and offered guidance to schools on dealing with immigration agents. Attorney General Rob Bonta released his own, more detailed guide last month.

Chandler Rebel, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, said “ICE does not target schools” and denied arresting anyone on the Allan Hancock campus, despite witness testimony and photographs. Rebel did not respond to questions about the officer who chased a San Diego City College student on campus.

After their interactions with immigration agents, Santa Barbara and San Diego city colleges put up or are in the process of installing signs in parking lots, sidewalks or at the entrances to classrooms and buildings, telling agents they need approval to enter.

In practice, these messages may not prevent immigration agents from coming onto their campuses, college presidents say. “It's kind of our district putting every effort that we can think of, and hopefully it is a deterrent,” Smith said.

A regular Monday 

Last Monday morning, Mayrin, 18, said she was sitting in the passenger seat while her father drove her to Allan Hancock College, where she had statistics class that day. As they drove by the Olive Garden just outside of campus, she said she saw a large black car follow them down the road.

Mayrin and her father parked in the campus lot, she said, where a masked man approached the window and asked for their identification. CalMatters agreed to withhold her full name because she fears drawing attention to her family’s legal status.

“I was calling people. I was crying. It was a mix of emotions, mostly just worried about my dad,” she said. Maryrin gave the officer her state ID and told him that she’s a U.S. citizen. Her father, who immigrated from Mexico and has lived in the U.S. for about two decades, did not have identification on him and the officer pulled him into his car, she said.

Mayrin spent the next 20 minutes alone in her father’s car, crying and calling family, before college staff, including campus police officers and the dean of counseling, brought her into a conference room to ask what happened and provide support.

Mayrin’s father was one of at least 17 people who were arrested last Monday by immigration enforcement agents in the Santa Maria area, said Assemblymember Gregg Hart, a Santa Barbara Democrat, in an emailed statement. “Mass enforcement sweeps like this are designed to send a message of fear and intimidation – one straight from President Trump.”

A student walks through San Diego City College in downtown San Diego on Oct. 9, 2026.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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The largely Latino towns in California's Central Coast region, which include Santa Maria, have experienced waves of immigration enforcement since Trump took office.

In April, Walthers said the college’s police chief had a meeting with other local police chiefs, the FBI and ICE officers who oversee the Central Coast. The college’s police chief asked immigration officials to provide advance notice before coming on campus. “The response was that ICE would not be coming to campus,” Walthers said. In retrospect, he said he wished the agreement was more formal.

After the arrest last week, Walthers said he got in touch with a federal immigration officer in Los Angeles and said he felt “optimistic” after the conversation that it wouldn’t happen again.

‘Without us knowing or without any previous approval’

In December, a local organization that advocates for immigrants, 805 UndocuFund, alerted Santa Barbara City College officials that ICE agents were at a campus parking lot and appeared to be using it as a staging area, according to Jordan Killebrew, the executive director of public affairs for the college.

Killebrew said agents were “occupying our parking lots without us knowing or without any previous approval.”

The college has since signed an agreement with 805 UndocuFund to help alert the college of the presence of federal law enforcement agents. The group will also provide college students and staff with resources and referrals including legal, financial, mental health and emergency support services for immigration-related matters.

Killebrew said the college spent about $1,200 on 12 signs, which say its campuses “may not be used for civil immigration enforcement staging areas, processing locations, or operations bases.”

The San Diego college district was already in the process of putting up similar signs when ICE appeared on campus last month. District spokesperson Jack Beresford said the four-college district spent $71,000 on 68 signs, including the cost of the labor to install them. The district also created a new policy requiring any entity, including law enforcement, to get prior approval before conducting “official business” on campus.

“We don't let a bank just come and set up a booth,” said Smith, the chancellor of the San Diego district. He said immigration enforcement agents would need approval before conducting their business, including arrests.

Whether the policy will actually work is less clear. “By the time I know that they're here and get down there to tell them they're not allowed to be here, they're going to be gone,” Smith said. “What I'm hoping that we have set up with this is a legal argument that it's an illegal seizure, the same as if they just broke into somebody's home.”

The policy has never been tested in court. He said he hopes it never gets there.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Tropical Storm Rachel brought dangerous surf to Long Beach’s oceanfront but little of the rain forecasters had warned about, as conditions are expected to gradually improve through Tuesday. While relieved, city officials reiterate that the Peninsula is far from in the clear, with major cleanup and emergency repairs underway as several seaside homes are still too dangerous to reenter.

The Peninsula was inundated with mud, sand and plenty of cameras, as onlookers and national news outlets clustered in tight side streets to get a good angle at the wave-damaged homes, as well as the splintered timber bulkhead and boardwalk. With waves and tides high but not quite at levels seen Saturday, crews pumped out excess water in the streets and shoveled sand and debris out of the storm drains.

Kristan Lund, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Rachel moved through Southern California faster than anticipated, limiting the amount of time Long Beach and nearby cities were exposed to its rainfall.

The center of the storm moved onshore in northern Baja California on Saturday night, according to the National Hurricane Center. Forecast tracks shifted south in recent days, but the storm then veered north-northeast toward Las Vegas, widening the gap between Long Beach and its reach.

Expected to get up to half an inch of rain starting as early as Saturday, Lund said the city shouldn’t expect more than a tenth of an inch through Monday, though a weather pattern Sunday evening may bring drizzles through the night.

The worst-case scenario also failed to materialize. Lund said peak swell, high tide and wind direction never lined up. “The high surf, you know, we were expecting it to come up on the backside of the high tides,” she said. “And thankfully, it ended up being a little too late.”

Several homes were red-tagged as waves continue to slam the bulkhead along the Peninsula in Long Beach, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Monday morning tides are expected near 7 to 7.5 feet, with surf of 4 to 6 feet. Water levels were still 1 to 1.8 feet above predicted tides, driven by El Niño-related thermal expansion, a Kelvin wave and elevated astronomical tides. Lund said a lingering southerly swell may shift westerly, putting west-facing beaches at some risk of coastal flooding.

The NWS said a coastal flood warning for Los Angeles and Catalina Island areas — which include Long Beach — was scheduled to drop to an advisory at 3 p.m. Sunday. Minor to moderate flooding is still possible through Tuesday afternoon, though it’s expected to be less severe than on Friday and Saturday.

Even so, the damage along the Peninsula’s Seaside Walk is extensive. Waves topped the boardwalk’s protective bulkhead and sent water into homes and streets. Inspectors have red-tagged nine buildings across 13 addresses, a designation meaning they are unsafe to enter. One building has a yellow tag, which restricts use.

A kayaker watches waves hit a walkway in front of homes in Long Beach, Calif., Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, as Tropical Storm Rachel approaches.

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William Liang

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A mandatory evacuation order covering homes between 64th and 66th places runs through noon Tuesday, and 39 more residences are under an evacuation warning.

Residents are not being allowed back inside. Assistant Fire Chief Jake Heflin said many have asked to retrieve belongings. “That’s the emotional side of it,” he said, but firefighters cannot send anyone into a building that could be on the verge of collapse.

At a control post they set up in the Claremont parking lot, firefighters gathered in front of a screen reviewing drone footage from the day that looked at the cracking and shifting homes.

A Long Beach search and rescue team fills sandbags at the Claremont lot for Long Beach residents on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Several of them pointed while others took note, looking for signs to suggest which building is closest to collapse and comparing their worsening conditions over the past couple of days.

If one falls, Heflin said, responders have bullhorns to sound off, then seal the area and conduct searches.

Crews are reinforcing the bulkhead and boardwalk with lumber beams and plan to place about 30 heavy-duty sandbags, each about 3,000 pounds, with a crane on 65th Place. City Spokesman Laath Martin said life safety remains the city’s top priority.

In response to the storm, the city has spent more than $1 million on one-time costs from its Tidelands emergency reserves, which are set aside for only coastal uses. Long Beach has also fast-tracked a multimillion-dollar plan to rebuild the Peninsula’s beach.

Large sandbags are placed at the base of the seawall to absorb some of the force of the waves as ocean water slams into the wooden bulkhead along the Peninsula’s boardwalk in Long Beach, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Over this week and the next, city officials say, they hope to start trucking in 50,000 to 100,000 cubic yards of sand, followed by a $11.4 million dredging project that could add another 415,000 cubic yards of sand — the most moved in decades.

Officials are pursuing outside funding aggressively and are in talks with the governor’s Office of Emergency Services for reimbursement to public projects, sand restoration, coastal work and emergency bulkhead repairs.

“We will be working with the state closely to identify any kind of reimbursement,” Martin said.

For private homes, the city is urging owners to contact their insurers right away. Long-term demolition and cleanup are the property owners’ responsibility, they say.

Native Americans celebrate their centuries-long history of resilience with ceremonies, dances and speeches.

Former President Joe Biden officially commemorated Indigenous Peoples Day in 2021. An increasing number of states and cities have also recognized it — pivoting from a day long rooted in the celebration of explorer Christopher Columbus to one focused on the people whose lives and culture were forever changed by colonialism.

Here is a look at why it’s called Indigenous Peoples Day and how people celebrate.

Why is it called Indigenous Peoples Day?

Indigenous Peoples Day has been recognized for decades in different forms and under a variety of names to celebrate Native Americans’ history and culture and to recognize the challenges they continue to face.

Biden had said in a statement that the day is meant to “honor America’s first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today.”

It is typically observed on the second Monday in October, the same day as Columbus Day, a federal holiday established decades ago to recognize Columbus’ sighting in 1492 of what came to be known as the Americas.

The day is often marked by protests against memorials to Christopher Columbus, for environmental justice, for the return of Indigenous lands and in honor of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

President Donald Trump has said he will not follow his predecessor’s practice of recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day in October.

Is Indigenous Peoples Day a federal holiday?

Although it is not a federal holiday, some states, as well as Washington, D.C., have holidays honoring Native Americans, some of which are on the second Monday in October. Indigenous Peoples Day is typically paired with Columbus Day or replaces the federal holiday altogether. A number of cities and school systems observe Indigenous Peoples Day as well.

Native Americans have campaigned for years for recognition

“For generations, federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures,” Biden wrote in the Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation.

“Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society.”

In a separate proclamation on Columbus Day, Biden praised the role of Italian Americans in U.S. society, but also referenced the violence and harm Columbus and other explorers of the age brought about on the Americas.

Landing in what is now the Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492, Columbus, an Italian, was the first of a wave of European explorers in the Americas pursuing quests for gold and other wealth, including people to enslave. In the course of that quest, Native populations were decimated.

“Today, we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities,” Biden wrote. “It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them.”