From the introduction

Much has been written about women as wage-earners, particularly the fact that they typically earn less than men. In 2015, a woman with median earnings working full time, year-round earned only 80 percent of what her male counterpart earned. This 20-percent difference is widely known as the “gender pay gap.” For a typical female worker, the pay gap adds up to nearly $10,500 over the course of a year and roughly $500,000 over a lifetime. This contributes to higher poverty rates among women. Research has shown that if women were paid the same as comparable men, the poverty rate among working women would be cut in half.

However, it is less well known that women also are disadvantaged as consumers – frequently paying substantially more than men for similar goods and services. Common products and services marketed to women, ranging from razors and soaps to dry cleaning, often cost more than similar products marketed to men. Manufacturers and retailers may claim that the price difference is due to higher costs for producing women’s products or providing services for women, but there is a great deal of evidence that there are significant price differences for practically identical products. In some cases, the only difference is the color. This markup has become known as the “pink tax.”

State unemployment rates for November were released on Friday, December 16, 2016. In November, there were 16 states with unemployment rates significantly lower than the national rate of 4.6 percent. Eleven states and the District of Columbia had rates significantly higher than the national rate and 23 states had rates that were not statistically different from the national rate.

When Barack Obama became President, our nation had just experienced what former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called “the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.” The State of the Economy – Then and Now captures the scope of the U.S. economy from that time until the near end of the Obama administration.

The facts highlighted in the document and charts demonstrate vast improvement over the past eight years. Unemployment has been reduced by more than half since its recession high. Real GDP is up 16.3 percent since the start of the Obama administration. Household wealth has increased more than $35 trillion. Over 15.6 million private sector jobs have been added in the recovery.

The short report, prepared by the Democratic staff of the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) includes economic data that tracks key indicators in all 50 states, including private-sector job growth, unemployment and home prices.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released state-level GDP data for the second quarter of 2016 on Wednesday, December 7, 2016. The JEC Democratic staff analyzed the data and created a table with a state-by-state breakdown of real GDP growth, including the percentage change over the past year, over the past three years, since the national low point for GDP in Q2 2009 and since the national prerecession peak in Q4 2007. The table shows that, over the past year (Q2 2015 to Q2 2016), real GDP grew in 37 states and the District of Columbia. Real GDP was higher in Q2 2016 than it was in Q4 2007 (the national prerecession peak) in 45 states and the District of Columbia.