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We already know that most people in the U.S. don't think that women get paid less than the men in their field. But a study shows that the gender pay gap is real — and just how wide that gap is depends on the career.
On Wednesday, Glassdoor released a new study called Demystifying the Gender Pay Gap. The company looked at more than 500,000 salaries for specific job titles at specific companies shared anonymously by employees online. The results show that men earn about 24% higher base pay than women on average, which the study refers to as the "unadjusted" pay gap. Long story short: That means that on average, women are paid about 76 cents for every dollar men get.
There are a lot of factors that affect pay, like industry, occupation, education, and age. And when Glassdoor factored in age, education, years of experience, job title, employer and location, the “adjusted” gender pay gap fell to 5.4% in the U.S., meaning women with the exact same qualifications earn 94.6 cents when men earn a dollar.
Now, that doesn't mean that the adjusted pay gap isn't real or important: It has been illegal for companies to pay men and women different salaries for doing the same job since 1963. While Obama has made closing the wage gap one of his passion projects, progress has been excruciatingly slow. And make no mistake: These "small" discrepancies really add up over time.
One of the most interesting parts of Glassdoor's new study was a breakdown of occupations with the largest and smallest adjusted gender pay gaps — after factoring in differences between jobs and workers.
Click ahead to see the 10 best and worst careers for equal pay in the U.S.
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