Ahead of Equal Pay Day on April 10, Lyft is committing to conducting yearly equal pay audits to ensure there are no pay discrepancies across race and gender. Last year, Lyft said it found pay discrepancies for less than 1 percent of its employees, and spent about $100,000 to adjust their salaries accordingly. Lyft has yet to conduct its second annual pay audit.
Other companies that have previously committed to equal pay include Facebook, Google and Salesforce. In March, Google disclosed it had spent about $270,000 to close any pay gaps at the company. Salesforce, on the other hand, had more significant gaps, having to spend about $3 million over the span of one year to adjust compensation and bonuses for 11 percent of its employees. Since 2015, Salesforce has spent about $6 million to close the wage gap.
While the gender pay gap has narrowed over recent years, it still exists. In 1980, the median hourly earnings for women was $12.48 compared to $19.42 for men. Fast forward to 2016, and the median hourly earnings for women went up to $16 compared to $19.63 for men, according to the Pew Research Center. That means the median working woman earned 83 cents for every dollar earned by men.
The racial pay gap also continues to exist. Similar to the gender pay gap, the racial pay gap has narrowed in recent years, but white men continue to out-earn black and Hispanic men, and all groups of women.
