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Salary Data Show Gender Pay Gap in Trump White House

Female office staffers are making 80 cents on the dollar, on average

Ivanka Trump, center, takes no salary as an adviser to her father at the White House. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Ivanka Trump, center, takes no salary as an adviser to her father at the White House. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Ivanka Trump’s voluntary $0 salary at the White House has been widely reported, but she’s not the only woman making less than her male colleagues there.

The annual report to Congress from the Executive Office of the President, released Friday, shows that women earn an average of $84,500, compared to $105,000 for men, according a Roll Call analysis of the salary data. That means female office staffers at the White House are making, on average, 80 percent of what their male colleagues make.

When calculating the averages, Roll Call omitted the three employees who are taking no salary, including the president’s daughter, her husband Jared Kushner, and a former Baltimore real estate developer.

That gap between women and men in the White House Office lines up closely with the Pew Research Center’s most recent statistics on gender pay disparity in the American workforce, where women earn 83 percent of men’s median hourly earnings.

There are, of course, women making high salaries at the Trump White House Office. Six of the top earners — those making the maximum salary of $179,700 — are women. They include well-known aides such as special counselor Kellyanne Conway, director of strategic communications Hope Hicks and reality television star turned presidential staffer Omarosa Manigault.

But there are 16 men who are making that top figure at the White House Office, with another who is on detail making even more. Press Secretary Sean Spicer, White House Counsel Donald McGahn and chief strategist Stephen Bannon are among the men in that list.

The lowest-paid staffers in the White House — excluding those who entered public service on the condition they receive a lower salary — earn $40,000 annually. Three of the eight employees in that category are women.

White_House_Average_Salaries_Total_chartbuilder (1)

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the pay differences between male and female employees.

Past reporting indicates the disparity is not new to the Trump White House — though it may be more pronounced. The Washington Post found in 2014 that women in President Barack Obama’s White House Office made less than men, but at an 88-cents-on-the-dollar rate, which is higher than what women earn in the Trump’s administration.

As with many topics, the White House has given mixed messages on its dedication to ensuring equal pay between the sexes. In April, equal-pay advocates criticized the president for signing an executive order that rolled back a regulation intended to protect women’s ability to earn the same as men.

One day later, Ivanka Trump tweeted her support for closing the gender pay gap.

In addition to men being paid more, there are also more of them on the White House payroll: 200 compared to 174 women.

Roll Call used first names and publicly available news reports and social media pages to determine employees’ genders.

Ryan Kelly and John T. Bennett contributed to this report.

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