- So what is your job?

- I work as a senior administrative associate.

- Software consultant.

- The elementary school principal.

- I am a sports and freelance photographer.

- Cost estimator for a construction company.

- Visual director and designer for high school marching bands.

- What is your annual salary?

How much do you make a year?

- Yeah, so my annual salary is I think a little bit under 52.

- I make 46.5 a year.

- Okay.

- Just over $100,000.

- I make about $85,000 a year.

- Right now, I make grand a month.

- 52,000 a year.

- 52,000.

- It's no secret that many millennials and Gen Z don't feel like they're getting back what they put in at the workplace.

A recent Gallup poll showed that over half of workers born after 1989 feel disengaged at their workplace, and a third described themselves as burnt out.

Workers cited factors like poor work-life balance, a lack of opportunities to advance in their careers and incomes that don't match up with their expectations as reasons why they feel checked out whenever they clock in.

So if you don't feel valued at work, what if asking your coworkers this one simple question could help you get more fair pay?

I'm KJ Kearney and this is "Citizen Better".

(upbeat music) Like many Gen Zers, Hannah Williams felt she deserved more out of work.

She hadn't negotiated her salary in her first job out of college, and later discovered she was being underpaid by $25,000 compared to a coworker who performed a similar role.

- That was a real career enlightening experience that employers will willfully underpay you because it helps their bottom line.

- With this new information about what her work was worth, Hannah started looking for jobs and was able to negotiate her next offer for an even higher salary than she had expected to ask for.

- So I started making videos on my personal TikTok account talking about how much money I made at every single job I had 'cause I realized if I didn't know what I was worth, a lot of other people don't know either so I was inspired by that experience, started posting about it.

I had one video where I shared how much I made at all five jobs I'd had so far in my career and it went viral.

It was my first experience going viral and really showed me that not a lot of people were talking about transparency.

Obviously, that's why there was an issue and people were craving that information.

Not because they were nosy but because they also had no idea what these roles were paying.

That was my idea for Salary Transparent Street.

I just figured if I go on the street and I ask strangers what they do and how much they make, I'll make one video and hopefully a couple people will see it and feel inspired to advocate for themselves or realize that they're underpaid.

- When she grew an audience of more than 1.4 million followers asking people about their salaries, Hannah realized that the problem of pay inequity was much bigger than just her.

Activists and legislators have been trying to fix these systems for decades.

But just because the law requires equal pay for equal work, it doesn't mean that it actually happens.

The US Department of Labor found that in 2021, the average white woman with the full-time job made only 80 cents for every dollar men made.

For many women of color, that gap is even wider with black women making 69 and Hispanic women making 57 cents on the dollar compared to the average man.

Part of this gap exists because women are overrepresented in fields with lower pay like childcare, education, and service work, and underrepresented in higher paying industries like tech and engineering.

Still wage gaps can exist when men and women are performing the same exact work.

In 1997, a manager at Goodyear Tire Plant in Alabama named Lily Ledbetter found an anonymous note with the salaries of three men who held the same position.

Even though some of them had less education and experienced than her, they were all being paid significantly more.

In 2009, president Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for employees to sue for pay discrimination.

Even if like Lily, it takes them years of work to discover they've been underpaid.

But workers like Lily Ledbetter and Hannah Williams wouldn't have been able to fight for equal pay if they didn't know that they were being underpaid in the first place.

And until you know what your work is worth, you can't negotiate.

When you became a principal, were you able to negotiate your salary or did they just tell you, this is how much you're gonna make?

- Well, my first...

When I first signed for my first contract, no it wasn't any negotiation there.

You know?

- Yeah.

- I was just pleased for the opportunity and grateful for it.

So I didn't even push the button to try to negotiate.

I do think there would've been an opportunity there.

- So when I started my job, I did get to negotiate based on the experience that I had and the education that I was coming in with so.

- Now, do you and your coworkers talk about salary at work?

- We do, yeah.

- You do okay, okay.

How do those conversations go?

- It's a very transparent conversation about what we make, being mindful of the market and making sure that we are looking out for each other.

- While pay equity is already the law, pay transparency is a tool workers can use to find out where our systems show bias.

A study that analyzed two decades of academic salaries found that even when controlling for institution, discipline, tenure status, and achievements like grants and publications, there were still pay disparities.

- Most corporations do not have a system in place that helps them determine how much to pay workers.

A lot of times it's based on, how do you vibe with the recruiter?

Do they like you?

Will they offer you more because they like you?

That leaves the system and those decisions incredibly open to bias and that's what causes inequity.

And that's why we see these racial pay gaps, these gender pay gaps, - Pay transparency, can expose patterns of bias so that employers can work on fixing them.

In that same study of academic pay, researchers found that as salary data became more available in the field, the gender wage gap in academia started to shrink.

With women making only 3.25% less than men by 2017.

This happened both because employers who made salaries transparent, felt pressured to bump up salaries of workers who were underpaid.

And because workers who found out they were underpaid, were more likely to leave their jobs and seek out better pay elsewhere.

- I realized that there was a real clear solution to all of this and it was to normalize pay transparency.

And that if we all have a good understanding of what different roles can make, not only can we find better careers that are a good fit for our lifestyles and what we'd like to achieve in our lives, it's also a good way to help close pay gaps for everyone.

- So if pay transparency is the key to keeping workers engaged and making equal pay a reality, what are equal pay advocates doing to make more transparency possible?

For one, most private sector workers in the US already have the legal right to talk about pay with their coworkers.

But talking about money at work can feel taboo or just plain scary so what can you personally do to make it easier to start the conversation?

- The first thing I would recommend is for them to take their research to their manager just like I did because there are corporations out there that are good actors and if you give them the opportunity to solve inequity, hopefully they'll respond kindly and help you out.

Ultimately, it is way more expensive to hire a new employee than to pay your current one fairly and I think a lot of corporations are starting to realize that so my first piece of advice would be take your market research, make sure you do good market research from good sources, there are multiple databases out there.

Also, you can have direct conversations with people, that is the best way to get that contextual information to help you determine how underpaid you are.

Take that market research to your manager and ask for a fair raise based on your research.

- And eight states have already passed laws requiring employers to be transparent about pay even before you get hired.

Either by including a salary range in the job posting, or providing it during the interview process.

Like most social change, achieving pay transparency is gonna take a lot of uncomfortable conversations all the way from the break room to the halls of Congress.

But for workers who feel disengaged and undervalued, the fastest way to fairer pay may be to start speaking up.

I'm KJ Kearney and thanks for watching "Citizen Better".

(uplifting music)