After five consecutive years of widening the pay gap between men and women, Senate Democrats now have the worst gender-based salary disparity in Congress.
Senate Democrats pay their female staffers only 92.4% of what men make. That means that the average female staffer took home $4,500 less than men in 2020. The Senate Democrats' pay gap has grown each year since 2015, when what women received reached 99.6 percent of what men did. All numbers come from a LegiStorm analysis of publicly available salary data.
Excluding Senate Democrats, pay gaps have shrunk across Congress over the last decade. Senate Republicans now pay women 98.6 percent of what men make ($800 less per year). Women working for House Democrats make 98.2 percent of what men make ($1,000 less), while women working for House Republicans make 95.7% of men ($2,380 less).
In the Senate, men outearn women in policy, communications and constituent-services jobs. Policy jobs make up the chamber's biggest pay gap, with women making $7,640 less than men. In the House, women in policy jobs actually make about $400 more than men, although they continue to make less in communications jobs and roughly the same in constituent-services work.
