A State-by-State Analysis of How Underpaid Women Are

Based on this calendar, there are months when you're effectively working for free.

Woman Working
(Image credit: Getty Images)

There's yet another reason to get angry about the wage gap in America: Technically, it means women are working for free—at least for a big chunk of the year.

Expert Market, a business-to-business marketplace, crunched the numbers from a study by the American Association of University Women to figure out how the wage gap affects people in different parts of the country.

They found that on average, women earn 22% less than men every single year. So if you think about that in terms of time, women work for free for the last three months or so of every year. And the pay gap is considerably worse for women of color compared to the national average.

But the extent of wage inequality differs a lot depending on where you live. Tough luck if you're working in Louisiana, where the typical woman "works for free" starting on August 29. But women in Washington D.C. fared the best, only working without pay starting November 29.

Check out the results—mapped out—and figure out when you have the right to zone out at your desk for a while. It's not like you're getting paid enough, anyway.

USA Pay Gap Map

(Image credit: Expert Market)
Megan Friedman
Editor

Megan Friedman is the former managing editor of the Newsroom at Hearst. She's worked at NBC and Time, and is a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.