Read Up On The Wage Gap In CRE Before Monday's Mandatory U.S. Reporting Deadline

The U.S. government is forcing companies to take the first step to closing wage gaps: figuring out how big the problem is.

Businesses with more than 100 employees have until Monday, Sept. 30, to report how much they pay their employees, broken down by gender, ethnicity, race, job title and location.

The data is being collected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which said it will use the information to make better determinations in discrimination complaints. The agency received 76,418 complaints of unlawful pay practices in 2018, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The UK has made its companies report their wages since 2018. Reporting was supposed to become mandatory in the U.S. in 2017; President Barack Obama implemented the requirement in 2016, but President Donald Trump halted its enforcement in 2017. A federal judge in April ordered it reinstated. 

As the deadline nears, Bisnow compiled some of our best reporting on the wage gap in commercial real estate.

CRE's Wage Gap Could Be Hurting Businesses' Bottom Lines

• The more women move up in the industry, the more their salary starts to look different than their male peers, and that's just bad business for companies.

Report: Forget Pay Equity, Pay Parity Necessary To Close The Gender Gap In Commercial Real Estate

• “I think that most people hear pay equity and they think ‘equal pay.’ But the end goal is parity,” CREW CEO Wendy Mann said. “It’s not ‘I’m a woman and I’m doing this job so I get whatever he’s making.’ It takes into account other factors such as education, work experience and tenure … Pay equity is the means to achieve the goal of pay parity.”

U.K. Commercial Real Estate’s Gender Pay Gap Is Almost Twice As Big As The Average

• Bisnow analyzed the results of the first mandatory wage reporting in the UK, and found a 27% gap between men and women's hourly rate pay, and 45% gap in bonuses.

Property’s Gender Pay Gap Got Smaller Last Year, But Is Still Worse Than Most Sectors

• There was some improvement in 2019 — Bisnow found a 25.3% gap in hourly pay, though the bonus gap remained static.

Report: Majority Of Women In CRE Face Pay Gap, Opportunity Discrimination And Sexual Harassment

• In a survey by RETS Associates, 87.2% of respondents said the biggest challenge facing women in CRE today is a need for equal pay, lack of promotion opportunities and feeling that female opinions aren’t as valued or respected as those of their male colleagues.