Internal survey at Apple reportedly shows evidence of wage gap between men and women

An employee-run internal survey at Apple indicates that the company is still facing a pay equity problem among its employees. According to a new report from The Verge, around 2,000 Apple employees opted into the survey, and the results show that there’s a six percent wage gap between the salaries of men and women who responded to the survey.

“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 says.

Scarlett told The Verge that the goal of the survey is not to draw definitive conclusions but rather to gain insight into Apple’s pay equity. “What we actually want is for Apple to do a third-party investigation into salary data, or an audit that we have insight into,” she said in a statement.

Around 1,400 technical roles appear in the survey results. The data shows that the median pay for men in mid-level technical roles was 6.25% higher than the median pay of women, and the median pay for white employees in these roles was 5.06% higher than that of non-white employees. Furthermore, the median number of stock grants was 11% later for non-white workers in entry-level and mid-level technical roles than for white workers.

Higher levels of the engineering organization show a partial reversal in this trend. The median pay for women in principal engineering roles is 1.2 percent higher than the median pay of men among survey respondents — but Scarlett is wary of the results. “Men in those high roles are less likely to respond to the survey because they’re the highest paid in the company, outside of leadership,” she says. There were far fewer respondents in this category than for mid-level technical roles.

One source who spoke to The Verge said that an Apple director discouraged employees from taking this survey during a meeting last week. “A lot of us had the same thought that what he was saying was not great, it felt antiquated,” the source said, according to the report.

In response to a request for comment from The Verge, an Apple spokesperson pointed to the company’s public statement on pay equity:

“Apple has a firm and long‑standing commitment to pay equity. Globally, employees of all genders earn the same when engaging in similar work with comparable experience and performance. 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.”