For all their talk of “intersectionality,” those on the far Left tend to keep their various causes separate. And for good reason. In one breath they will talk about the gender wage gap, and in the next discuss how dangerous some private companies’ working conditions are, usually for men.
For example, recently the New York Times detailed an investigation by ProPublica into New York City waste management firms and found that “[a]side from the hazards the trucks posed, sanitation workers had to handle materials like tree limbs, broken glass and biological waste that could infect, poison or otherwise injure them. They endured this in temperatures regularly exceeding 90 degrees, often without breaks. Crippling injuries were common.”
The article laments that these workers are “poorly paid.” But while they are paid less than the city’s unionized, municipal sanitation workers, they are paid close to the $16.95 national median hourly wage for sanitation workers. That is just below the $17.81 median for all professions, and for a job that doesn’t require a degree or any vocational training.
Unsurprisingly, men make up 91.4 percent of all Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors. This dynamic brings to mind a peculiar debate in which Jordan Peterson dispelled the idea of the wage gap. He noted, as many others have found on this question, that “multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn’t exist … If you’re a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis.” In other words, there are reasons other than discrimination that explain why men are paid more. And one of these reasons brings us back to the sanitation workers: Men make up 93 percent of workplace fatalities, and the term “hazard pay” exists for a reason.
Indeed, as Adam Smith pointed this out in his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations:
“First, the wages of labor vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment… A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer [skilled craftsman], seldom earns as much in twelve hours as a collier [coal miner], who is only a labourer, does in eight. His work is not quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is carried out in day-light, and above ground.”
We could repeat this exercise with other factors that each explain part of the apparent wage gap, such as hours worked, commuting time (men average 23 percent longer commutes) and willingness to relocate for work. It should not be surprising studies such as that of June and Dave O’Neill found that “the gender gap largely stems from choices made by women and men concerning the amount of time and energy devoted to a career.” Another, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor, found a gap of only about 5 percent after controlling for all the variables.
A 5 percent gap is still something, but there’s still no evidence that it’s caused by discrimination. It could have to do with women being on average more agreeable and therefore less likely to negotiate for a raise, or with decisions about childbearing and prioritization of time with family, or perhaps it’s just statistical noise. No regression analysis can be perfect.
But many proponents of the wage gap don’t accept any of the rather obvious refutations. Instead, this is said to be “blaming women’s choices.” But it’s actually a good thing that women are free to choose whether or not their highest priority in life is to earn the absolute highest possible wage, or whether other quality of life concerns take precedence.
If women tend, when given a free choice, to accept a lower wage in return for greater flexibility in their schedule, more life satisfaction in the work they do, or perhaps even for a job they’re less likely to get killed in the course of doing, is that really a bad thing? Money isn’t everything, after all. Perhaps the only real problem is that more men aren’t freely following their example.
Andrew Syrios is a partner in the real estate firm Stewardship Properties and a writer who lives in Kansas City, Mo.
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