Want to earn more money in your 20s? Delay marriage and move to New York

There is finally some good news about women’s wages! Today’s Times reports that in New York young college-educated women’s wages as a percentage of men’s rose slightly between 2000 and 2005.

Speculating on why young, college-educated women in urban areas, such as New York and Dallas, are earning more than their male peers, the article points to two factors.

First, there are more female college graduates working in New York, giving them an edge in a highly competitive job market where having a college degree is a requirement for most decent paying entry-level jobs. Second, as women push off marriage to their late twenties and early thirties, experts say they are freer to focus on building careers.

The first point doesn’t come as much of a surprise. We’ve seen the storyline about women graduating in higher numbers from college than men percolating for some time. The second point, however, that delaying marriage explains why 20something women have higher wages in urban areas is a twist to the “highly educated women set path to motherhood,” storyline. That explanation gives me some faith that the front of the Times in 2015 might read “Women stage opt-in revolution and set a path to higher wages.”

Admittedly, that is probably grossly optimistic. As the article points out, it’s not clear whether this will set a trend for women to earn at least as much, if not more, than their male peers as they move up the ladder. The current climate of the workplace seems to suggest that it’s not a sustainable trend, given that women often have to take time out to have children or encounter a glass ceiling in promotions and raises.

However, this latest finding provides a valuable paradigm and a much-need glimmer of hope for working women. It’s enormously encouraging that there are young women in pockets of this country that are defying the national statistics and gender stereotypes.

And while it’s certainly easier to prioritize your career when you don’t have a family, I wonder if it wouldn’t be impossible for women to continue focus on building their careers, even after they get that diamond solitaire and Bugaboo stroller. But that would require better on-ramping programs, the shattering of the glass ceiling, a more equitable division of child-rearing, and a commitment not to opt-out.

So I guess young women in New York, Dallas, Minneapolis, Boston, and Chicago should relish these precious years of higher wages, because they aren’t going to last forever, unless we decide we want them to.