In 2012, the Institute for Women's Policy Research reported a gender wage gap of 19 percent, with women earning 81 percent of men's weekly full-time earnings.
The gender pay gap is widely cited and has been common knowledge over the years, but the difference between the value that men and women put on their roles within their own companies is surprising. Female small business owners are, on average, paying themselves 80 percent of the salary of their male counterparts, according to data from Goldman Sachs and Babson College.
Although men and women value their worth differently when they get to write their own paychecks, the pay gap is slightly less in the tech industry. Dice, a website for technology professionals looking for jobs, reports that in the last two years men out-earned women overall by an average annual income of $95,929 to $87,527 (about a 9 percent wage gap). Dice believes that the wage difference is driven by the fact that the two groups tend to hold different positions in tech companies, rather than gender.
"When it comes to technology employment, it's a skills-driven marketplace," said Tom Silver, SVP of Dice about the data. "The ability to apply that know-how to a given problem remains the core of employment - why tech professionals get hired and how they are compensated."
Android and iPhone mobile developers in the U.S., who are working remotely through oDesk.com, request a far larger hourly wage of $52 compared to developers in the Philippines ($16), Pakistan ($19), India ($20), Russia ($27) and the U.K. ($38), according to a late-2013 study from Staff.com.
SEMPO's fourth annual salary survey of the search engine marketing industry found the average annual salary for search engine marketing professionals dipped nearly 10 percent from $75,543 to $68,600 due to an influx of new, entry-level workers in the industry.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reports that computer science offers the second-highest starting salary of all college majors at $59,100 in 2013 (down $100 from 2012). Engineering grads take home the highest-earning starting salary ($62,600), with business falling in third ($55,100) and communications in fourth ($44,600).
The top five designers on 99designs have each earned more than $5,000 in contest winnings in the past 30 days, not including any additional work they've sourced from customers whose contests they've won. (Customers engage their winning designers for additional work about 40 percent of the time, according to 99designs).