The unexpected reason New York is an awesome place for women

As if New York weren’t already one of the most desirable places to live, it can now add another “pro” to the list: it’s officially the only state where women earn more money than men.

Yep, that’s right: in 49 out of 50 states, men out-earn women ­— with New York as the exception. According to a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, between 2011 and 2013, Millenial women aged 16 to 34 on average earned 89 cents to the Millennial man’s dollar in the US (with $31,069 and $35,000 median salaries, respectively) — proof that the wage gap is very much still a problem. New York Millennial women were the only ones to barely earn more than their male counterparts, with median wages of $38,310 and $37,542, respectively (or $1.02 to the man’s dollar). Everywhere else falls short, in varying degrees from 72 cents to 98 cents to their male counterpart’s dollar; and while these new statistics aren’t particularly surprising, they’re nonetheless pretty disappointing.

But there is a silver lining. While the report may at first seem disheartening, it does suggest that Millennial women are gradually helping to close the wage gap overall. In the United States, women of all ages on average earn 78 cents to the man’s dollar, which shows that, at least generationally, we’re making progress (even if only by a few cents).

“Part of what is really driving the wage gap down in this generation is that Millennial women are far more likely than Millennial men to have a college degree,” Jessica Milli, a senior research associate at IWPR, told Refinery29. As Forbes points out, however, the most notable wage gap in the report is actually between men and women who have higher education degrees — with women who have graduate degrees earning just 69.1% of what men with graduate degrees earn, and women with bachelor’s degrees earning 71.4% of what their male counterparts earn. Which is to say, even if women are more educated than ever before, we still have a long way to go before we close the wage gap. But we’re getting there, and every step (no matter how slowly we take it) matters.

The report goes on to say that even though Millennials have higher student debt and a higher unemployment rate than the rest of the country, we’re still hustling and making it work — which is an awesome sign of our resilience as a generation during what can only be described as a rather gloomy economy.

That being said, for all the change we seem to be gradually working towards, the report also touches on something very important and not addressed nearly enough: the wage discrepancy between white women and women of color, which is a humongous problem in itself. According to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s findings for 2014, grassroots organization AAUW found that Black women earn 64 cents and Latina women earn 54 cents to the man’s dollar, which is notably less than the wage gap nationwide, and aligns with this more recent report’s findings.

It’s as important as ever that as women, we remember all women when fighting for gender equality, including women of color, disabled women, LGBTQ+ women, and women of different classes — and this report is the perfect reminder of just how powerful our solidarity can be.

New York may be ahead of the curve, but we can still catch up collectively as a country; and it’s statistics like these that will be the fire under us all to work towards change.

Check out the rest of the report for yourself right here!

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