Boulder County among top spots for women’s pay, study shows

Women who work full time in Boulder County earn a higher median wage than most other mid-size metropolitan areas, according to a study released Wednesday.

The research firm Smartest Dollar used data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis to rank large, mid-size and small metropolitan areas.

Boulder County, classified as Boulder’s metro, was the top area for women’s pay among all small metros in the nation, according to the report.

Women who work full time in Boulder County earn a median annual wage of $64,531, compared to the national median of $49,263. The wages were adjusted for the cost of living.

Grand Junction was ranked 13th on the small metros list, and Fort Collins was ranked 13th for mid-size metros, the study shows.

“Cities with more professional occupations in fields like business, technology, finance and law tend to offer higher wages for women,” the report states. “These locations with higher median wages for women tend to also have smaller wage gaps between women and men.”

The share of women working full time declined across the nation after the pandemic hit, researchers said.

“One primary reason for the decline is that family caregiving responsibilities often fall on the shoulders of women,” the report says. “During the pandemic, when many schools were still using remote learning and child care was unreliable, those burdens increased, and many women left the workforce to care for children.”

The pandemic did not impact women’s wages, however. Inflation-adjusted pay has been steadily increasing for nearly a decade, and has even accelerated in recent years, according to the study. In 2012, women across the nation earned a median inflation-adjusted wage of $43,074, and that increased to $46,196 by 2020. The figure then jumped by more than 6% in 2021 to $49,263. 

Men’s median wages were $56,751 in 2020, and went up to $60,428 by 2021, leaving a gender wage gap of more than 18%, the report shows.

The San Jose, San Francisco and Washington D.C. metros were ranked the top three in the large metro category, respectively.