Wage Gains for NJ’s Working Women [AUDIO]

Wages for the working women of New Jersey are gaining on those of their male counterparts, but the numbers are still not equal.

Martin Kohli of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that as of 2012, women in the Garden State averaged almost 80 percent of the wages of men in New Jersey.

"Women's earnings, relative to men's, depend on a number of things like education," Kohli said.

New Jersey women have been slowly catching up since 2004. Yet Kohli said those gains have recently stalled.

"Wages in general have been flat in this country over the last few years," Kohli said.

According to a recent report, in 2004 women in the state saw their wages come in at just over 74 percent of comparable pay for men.

Kohli said wage-earning women in a number of Northeast states have been paid consistently higher salaries than women workers in other parts of the country.

Nationwide, there was a lot of variation in male-female wage proportions. They ranged from a low of 65.5 percent in Wyoming to 86.6 percent in Arizona. Of the three states with women's-to-men's ratios of 85 percent or higher, two were in the West: Arizona and California.