March 26 is Equal Pay Day, marking how long American women must work into the year to earn the same salary as their male counterparts. The gender pay gap widened slightly in 2025, with women earning 18.6% less, on average, than men. Emma Cohn and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute explain:
The wage gap is smallest among lower-wage workers partly because the minimum wage creates a wage floor. At the 10th percentile, women are paid $1.39 (or 9.1%) less an hour than men, while the wage gap at the middle is $4.12 an hour (or 14.7%). Women at the 90th percentile of their wage distribution are paid $14.05 (or 19.6%) less an hour than men at the 90th percentile of the wage distribution.
The gap is worst for Black and Hispanic women:
White and AAPI women are paid 81.9% and 93.3%, respectively, of the amount non-Hispanic white men are paid. Black women are paid only 68.3% of white men’s wages at the middle, down from 69.6% in 2024. This is a gap of $9.87 on an hourly basis, which translates to roughly $20,500 lower annual earnings for a full-time worker. For Hispanic women, the gap is even larger: Hispanic women are paid only 64.5% of white men’s wages, an hourly wage gap of $11.06. For a full-time worker, that gap is over $23,000 a year. This disparity has also risen slightly compared with last year.
There are policies states can implement to narrow the gender pay gap:
Potential solutions include enacting pay transparency laws, mandating Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML), raising the minimum wage, funding universal child care, and removing anti-worker, so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) statutes.
Another attempt at sales tax centralization
Rep. Josh Carlson has filed two bills (House Bill 620 and House Bill 658) that would move Louisiana toward a centralized sales-tax collection system, similar to what other states have been doing for decades. Local sales taxes are currently assessed and collected by 54 different agencies across the state, which can make it very complicated for businesses to understand how to pay their owed sales taxes. Manish Bhatt of the Tax Foundation explains:
(T)he economy has changed, and customers now use online marketplaces more than ever. This requires out-of-state sellers to navigate the complexities of the state’s numerous jurisdictions that have authority to collect sales taxes, raising compliance costs, particularly on small and midsize remote sellers, and disincentivizing these enterprises from doing business in the state. Moreover, the high burden of compliance may, in fact, leave sales tax revenue on the table, especially when the opportunity cost of compliance is unduly high.
Bhatt explains why Louisiana should shed its outlier status and centralize its sales-tax system:
Louisianans pay the highest combined state and average local sales tax rate in the nation. The code also exempts a number of services from sales taxes, which renders the base unnecessarily narrow and makes it difficult to lower rates. The state lacks base alignment for local and statewide sales taxes. Add to this the compliance burdens posed by the lack of centralized sales tax collection, and it is easy to see why the sales tax code hinders Louisiana’s ability to break into the most competitive states.
Centralizing Louisiana’s sales-tax system would require amending the state constitution, which would need voter approval. State voters rejected a constitutional amendment in 2021 that sought to centralize the collection of state and local sales taxes under a new commission.
Early childhood education is essential
High-quality early care and education programs support children during their earliest years of development and help parents stay in the workforce. But Louisiana has not done enough to prioritize these programs in recent years. The state recently cut funding for early childhood education and could eliminate an additional 1,600 early education seats. Kamren Herring, student advocate with Save the Children Action Network, writing in a guest column in The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate, explains why state lawmakers need to reverse course:
Opportunity should not depend on someone’s ZIP code. Louisiana is ready to see a Kids First agenda from our lawmakers. If leaders truly listened to families, this issue would not be treated as secondary. Early childhood education would be recognized as essential. There would be stronger and consistent investment in programs that support low- and middle-income families, which would in turn boost the economy. Parents would not have to scramble for affordable options. Children would not lose access to meals, health screenings and safe learning environments that set them up for long-term success.
Expanding state tutoring program
Louisiana would expand a high-dosage tutoring program under legislation that advanced out of the Senate Committee on Education on Wednesday. Veronica Camenzuli of the LSU Manship School News Service reports on Sen. Patrick McMath’s bill:
The program has been focused on K-5 students who had failed assessments in reading, and McMath’s bill would also provide the tutoring to K-8 students who fail assessments in reading, English, numeracy or math. … Louisiana led the nation in learning loss recovery in reading after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Harvard and Stanford universities’ Education Recovery Scorecard. McMath said that high-dosage tutoring, which takes place at least three times a week, was responsible for the improvement.
Senate Bill 27 would also increase funding for the tutoring program:
This expansion would cost the state $15 million a year on top of the $30 million already allocated. The Legislature started to cover the cost of the tutoring from the state general fund in 2024 after the program lost federal funding. McMath said Senate and House leaders and Gov. Jeff Landry support the tutoring expansion.
Number of the Day
$160 – Increase in the annual cost of electricity in Louisiana in 2025. Electricity prices went up 9.5% in the Pelican State, higher than the national average of 6.4%. (Source: U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee)