Women earn $4.13 less per hour, says StatsCan

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A new report by Statistics Canada says that in 2018 women in their core working years earned 13.3 per cent less per hour than men, marking a 5.5 percentage point improvement over the past 20 years.

The report says in 2018 female employees between the ages of 25 to 54 earned $26.92 per hour, which is $4.13 less than their male counterparts.

That means that women earned roughly 87 cents for every dollar earned by men.

It was a narrower gender wage gap than in 1998, when the agency's data showed female employees earned $22.34 per hour, $5.17 or 18.8 per cent less per hour than males, or 81.2 cents for every dollar.

The researchers say the change in the pay gap was largely explained by changes in the distribution of men and women across occupations, women's increased educational attainment and the decline in the share of men in unionized employment.

The two largest factors explaining the remaining gap in 2018 were the distribution of women and men across industries, as well as the overrepresentation of women in part-time work.