Women’s wages and job quality in the 1920s United States

Working paper

What were women paid in the early twentieth century United States, and why did their wages differ? Using newly-digitized data with complete state-industry wage distributions, we find substantial sectoral and geographic heterogeneity in women's wages. Incorporating non-wage dimensions of job quality reveals that low-wage industries had generally lower job quality, while the strongest correlates to wages were the demographic composition of the industries' workforces. Combined with some evidence that women's labor supply was not fully responsive to differences in local labor demand, we conclude that many women were confined to low-quality, low-paid employment.

Authors: Schneider, B; Delabastita, V; Paker, MM

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers
• Publication date: 2025-10-08
• Paper number: 223
• Language: English
• Keywords: industries; 1920s; interwar; wages; regions; working conditions; job quality; women