Equal Job, Unequal Pay? Evidence from 4 Million Regulatory Careers

Using a novel dataset covering 36.5 million employee-year observations across 334 government agencies from 1973-2023, we document persistent and widespread gender pay disparities. Women earn 19.8% less than men in raw comparisons. Moreover, women earn 0.8% less when comparing employees within the same local office, occupation, rank, and tenure, which represents a wealth loss of $250,000 by retirement for a representative female employee. This gap arises from women: sorting into lower-paying offices, having lower promotion rates, and having lower pay within-rank. We examine three economic mechanisms. First, the gap is concentrated among higher ranks and more educated employees, consistent with gender gaps in negotiation and subjective evaluation. Second, female leadership mitigates pay gaps for lower-ranked females. Third, labor mobility plays a negligible role.