Reverse gender pay gap? Young men are earning less than women in big cities

Young women are earning as much as or more than their male counterparts in 22 U.S. cities, Pew Research found in a new research report. That could be a sign that educational gains by women and laws about pay transparency are helping to narrow the earnings gap between men and women — but it's still far from the norm, experts say.

This "reverse pay gap" — where women are out-earning men — is an outlier, with women continuing to earn less than men in more than 90% of the roughly 250 cities analyzed by Pew Research Center senior researcher Richard Fry. Nationally, women who work full-time take home 82 cents for every $1 dollar earned by men with full-time jobs, Pew noted. (See the cities and wage differences below.)

It's also notable that the study focuses on women under 30 years old. Economists have long noted that the gender pay gap tends to be smaller when women are younger — and that women typically fall behind their male counterparts as they get older. That's often due to the "motherhood penalty" that women face when they have families.