Informal Apple survey shows 6% wage gap between men, women

Credit: Apple

The survey was started by Cher Scarlett, who created it outside of Apple's purview after the company squashed a series of other pay equity surveys. At the time, Apple said the surveys weren't allowed because they collect sensitive information.

Early results for Scarlett's survey analyzed by The Verge suggest that the wage gap between men and women at Apple remains around 6%. That's about the same as the average in the San Francisco Bay Area, which hovers around 5%.

The results of the survey shouldn't be considered scientific — only about 2,000 people responded to it on an opt-in basis. However, Apple has claimed that it is working toward achieving pay equity within its ranks. Back in 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that women at Apple made 99.6 cents on the dollar, and underrepresented groups made 99.7 cents on the dollar.

"We know pay equity was a problem in the past and Apple did something to fix it, but we're having this conversation again because we're seeing gaps in certain areas of the company and we want to know what Apple will do to prevent it from happening year-over-year," Scarlett told The Verge.

Some of the other findings included the fact that there were fewer women, non-binary employees, and non-white people in technical roles or senior positions at the company — two places that often see higher salaries.

The Apple software engineer and a small team of the company's data analysis group will soon present the findings to Apple. Earlier in August, a source within Apple told The Verge that ad director at the company discouraged staffers from taking the survey.

The Verge, which was granted access to the survey data, came up with the findings by isolating the 1,400 technical roles and grouping them by job level, gender, and race. It then found the median salaries for the job level and parsed the data from there.

In a request for comment, an Apple spokesperson sent The Verge the company's boilerplate public statement on pay equity.

"Apple has a firm and longstanding commitment to pay equity. Globally, employees of all genders earn the same when engaging in similar work with comparable experience and performance," the statement reads. "In the United States, the same is true for employees of all races and ethnicities. We don't ask for salary history during the recruiting process. Our recruiters base offers on Apple employees in similar roles. And every year, we examine the compensation employees receive and ensure that we maintain pay equity."