August 24, 2021

An early analysis of the informal Apple pay equity survey shows a 6% pay gap between men and women, according to software engineer Cher Scarlett.

This is disappointing data for the tech giant, which claims people of all genders “earn the same when engaging in similar work with comparable experience and performance.”

The findings are not scientific, as workers opted for the survey and only 2,000 people responded, a small fraction of Apple’s 147,000 employees. However, the findings illustrate that some employees are suspicious of the company’s claim that it has solved its problem of wage equity.

A small group of company employees, including Scarlett and members of the data analysis organization, will present the findings to the Apple team in the coming days.

Scarlett also mentions that there are far fewer women, non-binary and non-white people occupying senior positions in the company or technical positions, which are usually among the highest-paid.

Among the survey participants in the data given to The Verge the median pay for men in middle technical positions was 6.25% higher than the median pay for women, while the median pay for white workers in mid-level technical positions was 5.06% higher than for non-white workers. The sample for the data included 944 white men out of a total of 1,408 respondents.

The median number of equity grants for non-white employees in entry-level and intermediate technical positions was 11% lower than the median number of restricted stock units for white employees among the respondents.

Higher levels of the engineering department are showing a partial reversal of this pattern, with the median pay for women in engineering positions being 1.2% higher than the median pay for men among respondents, but Scarlett says the findings may not be entirely accurate.

“Men in those high roles are less likely to respond to the survey because they’re the highest paid in the company, outside of leadership,” she says. Again, there were significantly fewer respondents in this category than in middle technical positions.

In 2016, Tim Cook told shareholders that women at Apple earned 99.6 cents on the dollar compared to men, and underrepresented minorities earned 99.7 cents on the dollar compared to white employees. The company later claimed to have fixed the problem.

For more information, read the original story in The Verge.