Conversation Starter: Youth, Industry Drive LGBTQ+ Pay Gap

LGBTQ+ workers in the United States earn about 16% less than non-LGBTQ+ workers, and transgender workers earn 23% less than non-LGBTQ workers, according to Glassdoor salary reports at the start of 2024. The pay gap for LGBTQ+ workers is similar in magnitude to the -18% pay gap women have compared to men.

This pay gap does not control for any other differences between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ workers – such as age and industry – that may explain the difference.

Part of the reason that LGBTQ+ workers face a large unadjusted pay gap is that they are disproportionately represented in lower paying sectors like Restaurants & Food Service, Nonprofit & NGO, etc.: LGBTQ+ workers are 23% of Restaurant & Food Service and Nonprofit & NGO sector workers who report a sexual orientation in Glassdoor salary reports, versus 11% of workers in the Finance and Information Technology sectors.

However, LGBTQ+ pay gaps persist even after looking within sectors. The smallest pay gaps are in the Nonprofit & NGO (-5%), Education (-6%), and Aerospace & Defense (-7%) sectors; the largest pay gaps are in Telecommunications (-19%), Retail & Wholesale (-17%), and Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology (-16%) sectors.

Another reason for the unadjusted pay gap may also be that LGBTQ+ workers are more likely to be younger and thus earlier in their careers: 22% of workers ages 18-24 who left salary reports on Glassdoor at the start of 2024 and indicated a sexual orientation self-identified as LGBTQ+, versus 18% of workers age 25-34, 12% of workers age 35-44, 8% of workers age 45-54, and 7% of workers age 55-64.

Finally, women are much more likely to identify as LGBTQ+, meaning the gender pay gap also disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ workers: 16% of women in the salary sample used report self-identifying at LGBTQ+, compared to 10% of men.

These factors – industry, age, and gender – alone don’t explain the LGBTQ+ pay gap, but are partial explanations. Regardless of explanations, we can infer there’s a gap, and that it’s substantial.

Methodology

Salaries are self-reported on Glassdoor by full-time or part-time employees in the U.S. for jobs held in 2023 or 2024 from January 1, 2024 through May 18, 2024. Sexual orientation is self-identified in anonymous salary reports on Glassdoor.

Conversation Starters are a periodic series of charts and data points from Glassdoor’s Economic Research team aimed at sparking conversations on timely trends in employee satisfaction, workplace community, the future of work, and the labor market more broadly.