Why California’s Latina wage gap is the nation’s worst

The wage gap for Latina workers in California is no secret. For any number of reasons, including a concentration in low-paying occupations and barriers to obtaining education and career training, the Latina workforce has always earned less than other groups in the state.

Even so, a recent report on the issue is startling. The California Budget & Policy Center found that Latinas in California earn just 44 cents for every dollar made by white men in the state — the worst such wage gap in the nation.

Further, California’s efforts to improve that ratio haven’t produced much. According to the center’s research, although Latina workers’ wages are growing at a higher rate than white men, their wage gap has shrunk by only a couple of cents over the past eight years — and it would take almost 130 years to close the gap entirely.

“We think of ourselves as a progressive state, but what we’re doing right now is not working,” said Hannah Orbach-Mandel, a policy analyst at the center. “We can’t just let the status quo and current policies stand.”

There are a couple of structural and social issues baked into this wage gap. Among other things, Latinas have long worked in large numbers in California industries like hospitality and care work. Those jobs not only pay poorly, but they’re subject to fluctuations in availability, along with reductions in hours and layoffs.

Latinas are also often the primary caregivers for their families, which can limit career opportunities in part because of a dearth of affordable child care, said Silvia González, a research director at UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute.

That’s a huge piece of the puzzle. Orbach-Mandel said research shows that a single mother with a school-age child in California will spend 61% of her income on child care — “A pretty staggering figure,” the analyst said. The same lack of access to child care hinders many Latinas who want to get a college or graduate degree, which might help them find better paying work.

Immigration and language issues also factor in. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, Latinas living with partners and children in the state are much more likely than their white counterparts to be noncitizens, and more than a third have limited proficiency in English. Both of those are huge barriers to upward mobility in the job market.

Partly as a result, the wage gap for Latinas is profound. Women of every other ethnic group in the state earn more per dollar than Latina workers when compared with white men. White women lead that list, earning 80 cents for every dollar earned by white men — nearly twice what Latinas earn.

Latina workers have made small wage gains over the past several years, Orbach-Mandel said. California’s steadily rising minimum wage has made a difference, researchers say, and the $20 per hour fast-food wage, which went into effect in April, is boosting pay for hundreds of thousands of full- and part-time workers, many of them Latinas.

But any long-term growth in wages for Latinas will be tied to their moving into jobs in better sectors of the economy, or to positions of greater responsibility within the industries where they currently work. That’s significantly about education — and lowering some of the barriers to it.

UCLA’s González feels the issue deeply. González, who directs climate, environmental justice and health research at the Latino Policy & Politics Institute, is a onetime high-school dropout who eventually rose to earn a PhD in urban planning. She needed child care help along the way.

“I understand the critical role that child care at my community college played in enabling me to work and stay in school,” González said. “Expanding degree programs and child care access in community colleges would enable Latinas to get the child care they need to remain in the workforce and pursue career advancement.”

Building out a system of more affordable child care is a critical piece, Orbach-Mandel said. Policymakers should also consider targeting higher wages in fields where Latina workers are overrepresented, like care, restaurant and hotel work, and creating a more comprehensive and accessible safety net so that a low-wage job doesn’t trap Latinas in a cycle of poverty.

Further, “We need holistic policy approaches that meet the needs of Latinas and our community as a whole,” González said. “For instance, investing in workforce development programs to prepare Latinas for higher-wage sectors like the medical field can break the cycle of occupational segregation while also improving health care access within our communities.”

It’s a state issue, not an ethnic one. According to UCLA’s research, there are more than 3.3 million Latina workers in California. Among workers ages 16 to 44, Latinas outnumber women in all other major racial and ethnic groups.

And they may yet be a sleeping giant in terms of their potential positive impact on the state’s economy. The Public Policy Institute of California noted in September that as of 2022, there were more than 840,000 working-age Latinas not participating in the labor force — nearly half of them noncitizens.

As California’s population continues to age, policies that encourage those Latinas to enter and remain in the workforce, as well as those that create pathways to citizenship, may well be critical to the state’s long-term economic growth. Raising wages in low-paying jobs and improving access to reasonable child care are two great places to start.