New Numbers Show the Gender Pay Gap Is Real

There’s an essential, frustrating truth about the gender pay gap: You can size it up or down depending on what you’d like to measure—and what you’d like to measure depends on what you think the pay gap is. Are you talking about all women across the economy? In a specific industry? A specific company? In certain jobs? “You can whittle the pay gap down when you control for more and more variables,” says Henry Farber, an economics professor at Princeton University. “But you can never make it go away.”

This year, Britain is forcing companies to report their pay gaps as they actually exist, no whittling allowed. By April 4, all businesses with at least 250 employees working in the U.K. will have to disclose any discrepancies in pay between their male and female workers. Ultimately about 9,000 companies representing 15 million employees will be forced to report, although only about two-thirds had done so by March 28. Those that don’t will be subject to unspecified fines and sanctions by the government’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission.