PolitiFact's gender pay gap shenanigans continue (2022 edition)

PolitiFact has completed quite a few fact checks touching the gender wage gap. And a Dec. 16, 2022 item from PolitiFact Wisconsin carries on PolitiFact's rich tradition of left-leaning inconsistency.

As we have noted here and at Zebra Fact Check, PolitiFact wanders all over the map on gender pay gap claims. Here's the central thing to remember, for those seeking consistency: The raw gender wage gap, such as the one cited by Sen. Tammy Baldwin in the claim pictured above, serves as no measure of gender (or racial) discrimination. PolitiFact Wisconsin both acknowledges that and ignores it for the sake of Baldwin's "Truth-O-Meter" rating.

PolitiFact Wisconsin:

As PolitiFact National, which has reviewed numerous pay-gap claims over the years, has noted: "a speaker’s choice of words can significantly affect whether their point about the gender pay gap is right or wrong." 

...

... (T)he government data isn’t based on men and women doing the same jobs. Rather, it’s an average that widens or closes by factors such as race, job type and age. Research suggests women are overrepresented in jobs that tend to pay less, for a variety of reasons.

PolitiFact Wisconsin explains why Baldwin does not deserve a "True" rating and proceeds to award Baldwin a "True" rating.

Review what Baldwin said. Again, from PolitiFact Wisconsin:

"On Latina Equal Pay Day, we bring attention to the fact that Latina workers make 54 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men. It’s past time that Latina workers are given equal pay for equal work."

Using the raw wage gap figure while appealing for equal pay for equal work implies that the raw wage gap represents the gap between groups doing equal work.

That's exactly what Baldwin did.  It's flatly deceptive, but "earns" a "True" from PolitiFact.

PolitiFact simply ignores the problem with Baldwin's implied argument, except for purposes of amplifying it. 

It works like this: Explicitly say that the raw wage gap occurs between groups doing the same job and get a "Mostly False" (unless you're extremely lucky!) Merely imply that the raw wage gap occurs between groups, as Baldwin did, and get "True" (unless you're unlucky!).

PolitiFact's inconsistency on the gender wage gap all by itself should dispel the notion that PolitiFact does its job in a non-partisan or objective manner.

It's a journalistic disgrace.

Afters:

PolitiFact's fact check is marvelously horrible. The deck reads "Yes, wage gap does have big impact on Latina workers." The wage gap itself is an effect, primarily of Latina women's choices of low-paying, unskilled jobs. It's not the wage gap driving them into those jobs. It's those jobs driving the effect of a pay gap. The job choices create the impact of the wage gap, not vice-versa.

PolitiFact repeatedly mentions that the wage gap represents the difference between what the average white man makes compared to Latina women. But it's a median figure, not an average. Past PolitiFact gender gap stories likewise tend to ignore the distinction. PolitiFact writes "The averages were based on median earnings for full- and part-time workers." We can think of no solid justification for averaging averages or averaging medians. It's the kind of math people invent to mislead others.

We republished this item because we neglected to give it a title when it was first published.

Forgetting the title results in a cumbersome URL making it a good idea to republish it.

So that's what we did. Find the post here.

PolitiFact and Bernie Sanders explain the gender pay gap

Everybody knows about the gender pay gap, right?

It's the statistic Democrats habitually misuse to amplify their focus on "equal pay for equal work." Fact checkers like PolitiFact punish that traditional deception by rating it "Mostly True" most of the time, or sometimes just "True."

Let's take a look at PolitiFact latest PolitiSplainer on the gender wage gap, this time featuring Democratic Party presidential candidate and "democratic socialist" Bernie Sanders.

Such articles might more appropriately wear the label "unexplainer."

PolitiFact starts out with exactly the kind of ambiguity Democratic Party leaders love, obscuring the difference between the raw gender wage gap and the part of the gap (if any) caused by gender discrimination:

The disparity in how much women make compared with men comes up often in the political discourse, tagged with a call to action to help women’s paychecks catch up.

Running just above that sentence the featured image directs readers toward the gender discrimination explanation for the gender pay gap. Plausibly deniable? Of course. PolitiFact didn't mean it that way or something, right?

PolitiFact goes on to tell its readers that a number of Democrats have raised the gender pay gap issue while on the campaign trail. The paragraph contains four hotlinks:

Several leading Democratic presidential candidates recently highlighted one of the biggest imbalances — saying that a Latina woman must work 23 months to make the amount a white man makes in one year, or that they make 54 cents on the dollar.

Each of the statements from Democrats highlighted the gender pay gap in an ambiguous and misleading way. None of the statements bothered to distinguish between the raw pay gap, caused by a variety of things including women working fewer hours, and the hard-to-measure pay gap caused by employers' sexual discrimination.

The claim from Mayor Pete Buttigieg was pretty much incoherent and would have made great fodder for a fact check (54 cents on the dollar isn't enough to live on? Doesn't that depend on the size of the dollar in the comparison?).

PolitiFact highlighted the version of the claim coming from Sen. Sanders:

Latina women in America must work for 23 months, on average, to make what white men earn in a year.

Equal pay is not radical. It is not extreme. It's an issue of basic justice.

We are ready to fight for decent, fair wages for women everywhere. #LatinaEqualPayDay

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 20, 2019

Sanders' use of the gender pay gap fits the standard pattern of deception. He leads with a figure from the raw wage gap, then assures the audience that "Equal pay is not radical ... It's an issue of basic justice."

But Sanders is misleading his audience. "Equal pay for equal work" isn't radical and may count as an issue of basic justice. But equal pay regardless of the work done is very radical in the United States. And that's what Democratic Candidates imply when they base their calls for equal pay on the disparities in the raw gender wage gap.

If only there were fact checkers who could explain that deception to the public!

But, no, PolitiFact does not explain Sanders' deception.

In fact, it appears PolitiFact has never rated Sanders on a claim related to the gender wage gap.

PolitiFact did not rate the misleading tweet featured in its PolitiSplainer. Nor did it rate any of these:

• "Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make.We need pay equity in our country--equal pay for equal work."
• "We must have equal pay for equal work: women want that whole damn dollar, not 79 cents on the dollar."
• "At a time when women make an average of 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, I am disappointed that every Republican in the Senate voted to filibuster the paycheck fairness act to insure equal pay for equal work."

PolitiFact ratings of the gender wage gap tend to graciously overlook the fact that Democrats almost invariably invoke the raw gender wage gap when stumping for equal pay for equal work, as Sanders did above. Does the raw gender wage gap have much of anything to do with the wage gap just from discrimination? No. There's hardly any relationship.

Should Democrats admit they want equal pay for unequal work, it's likely the American people will let them know that the idea is not mainstream and not an issue of basic fairness.

PolitiFact ought to know that by now. But you won't find it in their fact checks or PolitiSplainers dealing with the gender wage gap.

How Big is the Pay Gap from Discrimination?

Remarkably, PolitiFact's PolitiSplainer on the pay gap almost takes a pass on pinning down the role discrimination might play. One past PolitiSplainer from 2015 actually included the line from the CONSAD report's Foreword (by the Department of Labor) suggesting there may be no significant gender discrimination at all found in the raw wage gap.

In the 2019 PolitiSplainer we got this:

We often hear that discriminatory practices are a reason why on average women are paid less than men. Expert say it’s hard to measure how much of a role that discrimination plays in the disparity.

"Research shows that more than half of the gap is due to job and industry segregation — essentially, women tend to work in jobs done primarily by other women, and men tend to work in jobs done primarily by other men and the ‘men’s jobs’ are paid more," said Jennifer Clark, a spokeswoman for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Clark cited education and race as other factors, too.

Such a weak attempt to explain the role of discrimination in the gender pay gap perhaps indicates that PolitiFact's aim was to explain the raw gender wage gap. Unfortunately for the truth, that explanation largely stayed within the lines of the traditional Democratic Party deceit: Mention the raw gender wage gap and then advocate legislation supposedly helping women receive equal work for equal pay.

That juxtaposition sends the clear message the raw gender wage gap relates to discrimination.

Supposedly neutral and objective fact checkers approve the deception, so it must be okay.

We have no reason to suppose mainstream fact checkers like PolitiFact will stop playing along with the misdirection.

Gender Pay Gap Shenanigans from PolitiFact Virginia

PolitiFact has a long history of botching gender wage gap stories, often horrifically.

PolitiFact Virginia's March 13, 2019 treatment of the subject does nothing improve the reliability of PolitiFact's reporting on the topic.

It's not true that women earn 80 percent of the pay men earn doing the same job, though Democrats proclaim otherwise from time to time. And that's probably what Scott did, using "similar" in its role as a synonym for "same."

PolitiFact was apparently very eager to use the technique of charitable interpretation--most likely because Scott is a Democrat. Republicans rarely receive the benefit of that feature of competent fact-checking from PolitiFact.

We're partial to the using charitable interpretation when appropriate, but PoltiFact Virginia ends up running data through the confirmation bias filter in its effort to bail out Scott.

We'd judge Scott's use of the term "similar" as an ambiguity. PolitiFact Virginia calls it "nuance":

Scott’s statement, however, is nuanced. He says women get 80 percent pay for doing "similar" jobs as white men, which is different than saying the "same" job as men.

PolitiFact Virginia apparently skipped the step of checking the thesaurus to see if the terms "similar" and "same" may be used interchangeably. They can. The two terms have overlapping meanings, in fact.

We find it notable that PolitiFact Virginia set aside the usual PolitiFact practice of relying on explanations from spokespeople representing the figure being fact-checked.

Scott's staff said he got his numbers from sources relying on Census Bureau data.

PolitiFact Virginia:

Stephanie Lalle, Scott’s deputy communications director, told us the congressman got the statistic from separate reports published in late 2018 by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Both reports said the statistic comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. The latest gender-gap statistics from the Bureau show in 2017 women earned 80.5 percent of what men made - the same percentage as in 2016.

PolitiFact Virginia's determination to defend Scott's statement leads it to spout statistical mumbo-jumbo. Based on apparently nothing more the Scott's "nuanced" use of the term "similar," PolitiFact Virginia tried to reverse engineer an explanation of his statistic to replace the explanation offered by Scott's staff.

What if "similar" meant broad classes of jobs, and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed white men making more than women in those classes of jobs?

PolitiFact Virginia thought it was worth a shot:

Women out-earned men in three occupations: wholesale and retail buying; frontline supervisor of construction trades and extraction workers; and, as we mentioned, dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers.

Fact-checking Scott, however, requires a deeper dive. The percentages we just discussed compare the full-time weekly earnings of all women to all men in these occupations. Scott, in his statement, compared the earnings of all women to white men in similar jobs.

The BLS’s data set that compares gender pay by specific jobs does not sort men and women by race. It does, however, categorize the jobs into 29 broad fields of work and, in each of those fields, breaks down women and men by sex.

Overall in 2018, women earned 78.7 percent less than white men in the same areas of work. The comparison of women’s pay to white men’s produces a bigger gender gap than the comparison to all men. That’s because white males tend to earn more than black males.

White men out-earned women in all 29 fields of work.

Note that PolitiFact Virginia isn't really showing its work. And what it does show contains appalling mistakes.

Let's break it down piece by piece.

Piece by Piece, Step by Step

"The percentages we just discussed compare the full-time weekly earnings of all women to all men in these occupations."

Do the percentages compare the full-time weekly earnings of all women to all men in those occupations? It's hard to tell from PolitiFact's linked source document. If author Warren Fiske was talking about Table 18, as we believe, then the fact check should refer to Table 18 by name.

Looking at Table 18, it seems Fiske reasoned improperly. The table mentions 121 groups of occupations but most of occupations nested under the list headers have no estimate of a gender wage gap, entering a dash instead of a number. In the notes at the bottom of the table, BLS warns that a dash means "no data or data that do not meet publication criteria." That makes it improper to extrapolate the listed results into a nationally representative number. Nor should a fact-checker assume that the subject of the fact check had such creative reasoning in mind.

In short, using numbers from Table 18 to support Scott represents unjustifiable cherry-picking.

"Scott, in his statement, compared the earnings of all women to white men in similar jobs."

We cannot find any citation in PolitiFact Virginia's fact check that offers data addressing the racial aspect of Scott's claim. Without that data, how can the fact checker reach a reasonable conclusion about the claim?

"The BLS’s data set that compares gender pay by specific jobs does not sort men and women by race."

That's bad news for this fact check. As noted above, without the data on race there's no checking the claim.

"It does, however, categorize the jobs into 29 broad fields of work and, in each of those fields, breaks down women and men by sex."

Breaking down men and women by sex is not the same as breaking them down by race, so this "however" doesn't point the way to a solution to the problem.

"Overall in 2018, women earned 78.7 percent less than white men in the same areas of work."

The fact checkers probably meant 78.7 cents to the dollar compared to men, not 78.7 percent less (about 22 cents to the dollar). But we still do not know the source of the race-based claim. We'd love to see a clear clue from PolitiFact Virginia regarding the specific source of this claim.

"The comparison of women’s pay to white men’s produces a bigger gender gap than the comparison to all men. That’s because white males tend to earn more than black males."

This part we follow. But it doesn't help us understand how PolitiFact can claim how white men out-earned women in all 29 fields of work in the BLS data.

"White men out-earned women in all 29 fields of work."

Based on what? We just went through PolitiFact's argument step by step. There's no reasoning in the fact check to justify it, and we can't find any citation that appears to lead to a justifying document.

Summary

PolitiFact failed to offer information justifying its key data point ("White men out-earned women in all 29 fields of work). It failed to show how cherry-picking that information, even if legitimately sourced, would justify Scott's statement in the context of "fair pay" legislation. And it simply blundered with the claim that women earned 78.7 percent less than white men (in same areas of work or otherwise).

Making the bad news worse, we could write another article about the problems in PolitiFact Virginia's wage gap story without repeating the same points.

Update March 14, 2019

After we contacted PolitiFact Virginia on March 13, 2019 it corrected the "78.7 percent less" mistake.

PolitiFact Virginia attached no editor's note to the story indicating either a correction or clarification.

Note this from PolitiFact's policy on corrections:

Errors of fact – Errors of fact that do not impact the rating or do not change the general outlook of the fact-check receive a mark of correction at the bottom of the fact-check.

The text of the fact-check is updated with the new information. The correction states the correct information that has been added to the report. If necessary for clarity, it repeats the incorrect information. Corrected fact-checks receive a tag of "Corrections and updates."

Typos, grammatical errors, misspellings – We correct typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, transpositions and other small errors without a mark of correction or tag and as soon as they are brought to our attention.

So we're supposed to believe writing "earned 78.7 percent less" instead of "78.7 percent as much" counts as one of the following:

• typo
• grammatical error
• misspelling
• transposition
• other small error

Who buys it?


Update Aug. 5, 2019

On some unknown date, PolitiFact Virginia got around to adding a correction notice to its fact check article:

Correction: Women earned 78.7 percent as much as white men, overall, in 22 broad fields of work in 2018, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. An earlier version of this story misstated the statistics.

The story does not, however, appear on PolitiFact's supposedly exhaustive list of corrected or updated stories (there's no subject tag on the story that would result in it appearing on that list).

PolitiFact continues to botch the gender pay gap

We can depend on PolitiFact to perform lousy fact-checking on the gender wage gap.

PolitiFact veteran Louis Jacobson proved PolitiFact consistent ineptitude with an April 13, 2018 fact check of Sen. Tina Smith (D-Min.), Sen. Al Franken's replacement.

Sen. Smith claimed that women earn only 80 cents on the dollar for doing the same jobs as men. That's false, and PolitiFact rated it "Mostly False."

That 80-cents-on-the-dollar wage gap is calculated based on full-time work irrespective of the job type and irrespective of hours worked once above the full-time threshold. The figure represents the median, not the average.

But isn't "Mostly False" a Fair Rating for Smith?

Good question! PolitiFact noted that the figure Smith was using did not take the type of job specifically into account. And PolitiFact pointed out that Smith made a common mistake. People often fail to mention that the raw wage gap figure doesn't take the type of job into account.

PolitiFact's Jacobson doesn't precisely spell out why PolitiFact finds a germ of truth in Smith's statement. Presumably PolitiFact's reasoning matches that of its earlier ratings where it noted that the wage gap statistic is accurate except for the part about it applying to equal work. So it's true except for the part that makes it false, therefore "Mostly False" instead of "False."

Looking at it objectively, however, it's just plain false that women earn 80 cents on the dollar for doing the same work. Researchers talk about an "unexplained gap" after taking various factors into account to explain the gap, and the ceiling for gender discrimination looks like it falls to around 5 percent to 7 percent.

Charitably using the 7 percent figure as the ceiling for gender-based wage discrimination, Smith exaggerated the gap by 186 percent. It's likely the exaggeration was far greater than that.

For comparison, when Bernie Sanders said 40 percent of U.S. gun sales occur without background checks, PolitiFact gave him a "False" rating for exaggerating the right figure by 90 percent.

The Ongoing Democratic Deception PolitiFact Overlooks

If a Democrat describes the 80 percent raw pay gap accurately, why not give it a "True" rating? Or at least "Mostly True"?

Democrats tend to trot out the raw gender pay gap statistic while proposing legislation that supposedly addresses gender discrimination. By repeatedly associating the raw wage gap with the issue of wage discrimination, Democrats send the implicit message that the raw wage gap describes gender discrimination. It uses the anchoring bias to mislead the audience about the size of the pay gap stemming from gender discrimination.

Democrats habitually use "Equal Pay Day," based on the raw wage gap, to argue for equal pay for equal work. But the raw wage gap doesn't take the type of job into account.

Trust PolitiFact not to notice the deception.

Fact checkers ought to assist in making Democrats clarify their position. Are Democrats in favor of equal pay regardless of the job or hours worked? Or do Democrats believe the demands for equal pay apply only to matters of gender discrimination?

If the latter, Democrats' continued use of the raw wage gap to peg the date of its "Equal Pay Day" counts as a blatant deception.

If the former, voters deserve to know what Democrats stand for.

Afters


It amused us that Jacobson directly referenced an earlier PolitiFact Florida botched treatment of the gender pay gap.

PolitiFact Florida couldn't figure out that claiming the gap occurs "simply because she isn't a man" is equivalent to claiming the raw gap is for men and women doing the same work. Think about it. If the gap occurs "simply because she isn't a man" then the reason for the disparity cannot be because she is doing different work. Doing different work would be a factor in addition to her not being a man.

PolitiFact Florida hilariously rated that claim "Mostly True." We wrote about it on March 14, 2017.

Fact checkers. D'oh.

PolitiFact New York: Facts be damned, what we think the Democrat was trying to say was true

Liberals like to consider the tendency of fact checkers to rate conservatives more harshly than liberals a fairly solid evidence that Republicans lie more. After all, as we are often reminded, "truth has a liberal bias." But the way fact checkers pick which stories to tell and what facts to check has a fundamental impact on how fact checkers rate claims by political party.

Take a June 9, 2017 fact check from PolitiFact New York, for example.

Image from PolitiFact.com

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) of New York proclaimed that the state of New York has achieved pay equity.

Hochul also proclaimed women are paid 90 cents on the dollar compared to men.

Hochul's first claim seems flatly false, if we count women getting paid $1 for every $1 earned by a man as "pay equity."

Her second claim, putting an accurate number on the raw gender wage gap, typically rates either "Half True" or "Mostly True" according to PolitiFact. PolitiFact tends to overlook the fact that the statistic is almost invariably used in the context of gender discrimination (see "Afters" section below).

In fact, the PolitiFact New York fact check focuses exclusively on the second claim of fact and takes a pass on evaluating the first claim of fact. PolitiFact New York justified its rating by saying Hochul's point was on target (bold emphasis added):

Hochul's numbers are slightly off. The data reveals a gender pay gap, but her point that New York state has a significantly smaller gap compared with the national average is correct. We rate her claim Mostly True.

At PolitiFact Bias, we class these cases under the tag "tweezers or tongs." PolitiFact might focus on one part of a claim, or focus on what it has interpreted as the point the politician was trying to make. Or, PolitiFact might look at multiple parts of a claim and produce a rating of the claim's truthiness "on balance."

PolitiFact in this case appears to use tweezers to remove "We have pay equity" from consideration. That saves the Democrat, Hochul, from an ugly blemish on her PolitiFact report card.

The fact checkers have at least one widely recognized bias: They tend to look for problematic statements. When a fact checker ignores a likely problem statement like "We have pay equity" in favor of something more mundane in the same immediate context, it suggests a different bias affected the decision.

The beneficiary of PolitiFact's adjusted focus once again: a Democrat.

When this happens over and over again, as it does, this by itself calls into question whether PolitiFact's candidate "report cards" or comparisons of "Truth-O-Meter" ratings by party carry any scientific validity at all.



Afters

Did Hochul make her gender wage gap claim in the context of gender pay discrimination?

Our best clue on that issue comes from Hochul's statement, just outside the context quoted by PolitiFact New York, that "Now, it's got to get to 100 [cents on the dollar]."
We draw from that part of her statement that Hochul was very probably pushing the typical Democratic talking point that the raw wage gap results from gender discrimination, which is false. Interpreting her otherwise makes it hard to see the importance of pay equity regardless of the jobs men and women do. We doubt the popularity of having gender pay equity regardless of the job performed, even in the state of New York.

The acid test: Will women's groups react with horror if women achieve an advantage in terms of the raw wage gap? When men make only 83 cents on the dollar compared to women? Or will they assure us that the differences in pay are okay as it is the result of the job choices people make? We'll find out in time.

There You Go Again: PolitiFact Florida makes a hash of another gender wage gap ruling

Though PolitiFact is an unreliable fact-checker, at least one can bank on the mainstream fact-checker's ability to flub gender wage gap claims.

We hit PolitiFact on this issue often, but this latest one from PolitiFact Florida is a doozy, rivaling PolitiFact Oregon's remarkable turd from 2014.

Drum roll: PolitiFact Florida, March 14, 2017:

We're presenting a big hunk of the fact check as it appears at PolitiFact Florida to show how PolitiFact Florida effectively contradicts its own reasoning.

In the next-to-last paragraph of its summary, PolitiFact Florida explains that "differences in pay can be affected by the careers women and men choose and taking time off to care for children." Those aren't the only factors affecting the raw wage gap, by the way.

Yet in the ironically named "Share The Facts" version, the "Mostly True" rating blares its message aside Democrat Patricia Farley's claim the disparities occur purely based on gender ("simply because she isn't a man"). In other words, the cause is gender discrimination, not different job choices and the like--directly contradicting PolitiFact Florida's caveat. Farley didn't just leave out context. She explicitly denied the key bit of context.

Anyone who knows the difference between the raw gender wage gap and the wage gap based solely on gender discrimination but uses the large former gap in the context of arguing for legislation to reduce gender discrimination is deceiving people. The raw gender wage gap is not a realistic representation of gender discrimination in wages because of other factors, such as men and women tending to choose careers that pay differently.

So, yes, we're saying that unless Patricia Farley is ignorant about the difference between the gender wage gap and the wage gap caused by pay discrimination, she is lying, as in deliberately deceiving her audience. And PolitiFact Florida is calling her falsehood and potentially intentional deception "Mostly True."

The PolitiFact Florida wage gap fact check is below average for PolitiFact--and that's like failing to leap over a match box.

Correction March 15, 2017: Posted the intended URL for the PolitiFact Florida fact check. We had mistakenly used the URL to a related fact check concerning Donald Trump.

Gender pay gap follies with PolitiFact Missouri (Updated)

I've covered the poor job mainstream fact checkers do on Democrats' gender pay gap claims at Zebra Fact Check back in 2014. PolitiFact remains a basket case example among the big three fact checkers. A May 18, 2016 fact check from PolitiFact Missouri perhaps establishes a new low point in fact-checking the gender pay gap.

Our review of this case will look at the major errors first, but this post will go in-depth on the evidence because this case looks very bad for PolitiFact. The facts demand we consider the possibility that PolitiFact Missouri chose and executed this fact check to deliberately favor Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Koster.

The Gender Pay Gap in Missouri

PolitiFact Missouri's fact check focuses on a claim made on Twitter:

Koster tweeted, "The #WageGap isn’t about isn’t about [sic] a few cents — it can mean EVERYTHING to a working woman trying to provide for her family."

His tweet contained a photo with a captain [sic] that stated, "Closing our state’s wage gap would make a $9 billion difference to Missouri women."

Democratic politicians often blur the line between the raw gender pay gap and a gap caused by gender discrimination in the workplace.

The raw gender pay gap in this case represents the difference in pay between men and women regardless of the job and without accounting for differences in hours worked by full-time employees.

The unexplained gender pay gap is the difference in pay between men and women after explaining part of the gap. The unexplained gap varies depending on what the researchers try to explain, so measurement of that gap may vary.

Some portion of the unexplained gap is perhaps explained by gender discrimination. But the research does not pin down that percentage. Studies that consider more potential explanations tend to show smaller unexplained gaps.

PolitiFact Missouri acknowledged that Koster blurred that line between raw pay gap and any percentage of that gap caused by gender discrimination . But PolitiFact Missouri's generous calculation of wages potentially lost to gender discrimination was close to Koster's $9 billion figure. So Koster eventually skated with a "Mostly True" rating (bold emphasis added):

A study from the Institute for the Study of Labor, an economic research institute based in Bonn, Germany, shows the unexplained wage gap in the United States falls somewhere between 8 percent and 18 percent of the total earnings difference, if the figures are adjusted for additional factors.Using the high-end estimate, the $9.5 billion figure falls to about $7.5 billion.

At first, we thought PolitiFact did the wrong math equation. If  "18 percent of the total earnings difference" may stem from gender discrimination, then taking 18 percent of the total earnings difference ($9.5 billion, according to PolitiFact Missouri) should yield a figure of $1.71 billion. Yet PolitiFact Missouri calculated a figure of $7.5 billion. Our first messages to PolitiFact Missouri about its fact check questioned their math equation.

However, we did not do a good enough job verifying that PolitiFact's description of the report was correct. The report estimates an unexplained gender pay gap between 8 and 18 percent [see embedded Update for clarification] for 2014 2010. So 18 percent represents the total unexplained earnings difference the researchers estimated, not a percentage of the raw gender wage gap. PolitiFact Missouri described the report's results poorly.  PolitiFact Missouri also relied on a study that skimped on gap explanations compared to other studies found through its source list.

Using its preferred study, PolitiFact calculated as much as $7.5 billion of the raw $9.5 billion gap may represent gender discrimination. The math is right. But is PolitiFact Missouri justified in using the 18 percent figure for its calculation?

We think using the high-end estimate from the report containing the highest estimates amounts to cherry-picking. We expect neutral fact checkers to avoid cherry-picking.

After the page break, we'll describe the findings of the reports PolitiFact Missouri cited but ignored for purposes of its math equations. Beyond that, we'll note how PolitiFact passed up an easier fact check of Koster--one with a cut-and-dried poor result for Koster. That other fact check was also from Koster's Twitter feed, so we see no obvious reason why PolitiFact Missouri would have missed it.

PolitiFact Georgia, PolitiMath and the gender pay gap

On April 22, 2015, PolitiFact Georgia found it "Mostly False" that women make only 78 percent of what men make for doing the same work.

PolitiFact Georgia reported that the claim, from a Buzzfeed video, based its claim on statistics that, among other faults, did not bother to ensure that the men and women were doing the same work.

At Zebra Fact Check I've published an in-depth treatment of the way mainstream fact checkers mishandle the gender pay gap. But here we'll look narrowly at how PolitiFact Georgia applies a "Mostly False" rating to a gross exaggeration. Our "PolitiMath" stories explore the relationship between percentage error and PolitiFact's ratings, so PolitiFact Georgia's story makes a good subject.

PolitiFact's highest estimate of the wage gap after controlling for the type of job and some other factors was about 7 percent:

(T)he American Association of University Women that controlled for college major, occupation, age, geographical region, hours worked and more, and found there was still a 7 percent wage gap between male and female college grads a year after graduation.

Using that high-end estimate, the Buzzfeed video exaggerated by no less than 214 percent. There's precedent for liberals receiving ratings of "Mostly False" or better for exaggerations that large and larger. On the other hand, PolitiFact Wisconsin gave a state Democrat a "False" rating for an exaggeration of 114 percent.

At least we know Buzzfeed's exaggeration is not the largest to receive a rating of "Mostly False" or higher.

If anyone can find a statement from a Republican or conservative where a figure exaggerated by more than 100 percent received a rating of "Mostly False" or higher from PolitiFact, we'd love to hear about it. We haven't turned up anything like that yet.