Equal Pay Study in Montana Found A Gender Pay Gap in Several Areas of Work

An audit of Montana executive branch employees found a gender pay gap.

Bonnie Shoemaker from the Montana Department of Administration conducted the study and explained what she found.

"The type of employees that runs anything from a mail clerk up to some of the higher level classified managers within Montana state government," Shoemaker said. "Overall, Montana women make 67 percent of what men earn. In comparison, Montana state ratio, women make 86.09 percent of what men earn."

Shoemaker said there were some unsurprising reasons for the discrepancy.

"There are fewer female workers in the executive branch upper level management then there are men," Shoemaker said. "Some of those occupations, there simply wasn't representation, like some occupations only one person in them, so those kinds of things."

According to the report, women doing similar work as men in state government are paid nearly the same as their male colleagues. When considering job codes with representation by both genders, women make an average of 98.68 percent of what men earn.