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In 2015, full-time employed women in Texas made $683 per week. That compares to $864 median weekly earnings for men.
Cheryl Abbot is a regional economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Dallas. She says a lot of it has to do with the fact that men are more likely to work in higher paying oil and gas, construction or transportation industries – whereas more women work in lower paying office and administrative jobs.
"Now I'm not trying to say there is absolutely no difference between median earnings for men versus women, but a lot of it is based on the simple occupational distributions."
Compared to the rest of the country, Texas ranks 31st in the difference between men's and women's pay.
Abbot says the ratio improved up until 2010 when the recession hit Texas. But the gap increased with the oil boom, "…where we saw men concentrated in very high-paying occupations. As that industry boomed, it pushed up their median earnings."
Women started to catch up again in 2014 when the price of oil fell dramatically. But the gap widened again last year.