By Alex Tanzi
(Bloomberg) -- Millionaire women are out-earning millionaire men in the U.S., according to the latest available IRS data compiled by Bloomberg.
Women taxpayers with wages of at least $1 million earned an average $2,506,220 versus $2,477,680 for men, according to data from 144.2 million tax returns containing wage income in 2016 that were filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
The number of women in the $1 million-plus club climbed to 17,609 in 2016, up from 6,597 in 2009, the year the recession ended. Aggregated wages for this group jumped threefold to $44.1 billion in 2016, from $13.8 billion in 2009.
The returns were split almost equally by gender, according to the data. Still, men earned 61.4% of the total wages overall. In addition, some 8,000 men earned at least $5 million in 2016, while only about 1,850 women reported wages of that size.
Wage growth among high-earning women is narrowing when compared with their male counterparts. Around 400,000 men earned half-a-million dollars or more in wage income in 2016, six times more than women that year. In 2009, there were eight times as many men as women earning that amount.
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Wei Lu, Virginia Van Natta