There have been many studies on the differences in earning-power between men and women. Have similar studies been done for race, religion or sexual orientation?

Question

I'm curious to know if there are similar biases in the workplace - if anyone's dared to document it.

Answer 1

There is data in the Wikipedia article Personal Income in The United States which I believe addresses your question. The results are not a surprise to me.

Answer 2

There is a quite an extensive literature on the racial/ethnic and gender differences in earnings in the US and elsewhere. There is comparatively less of this work done on earnings differences in sexual orientation, but starting with a great paper from 2001 that relied on a novel use of census data from the 2000 US Census, it was shown that gay men earn roughly 16% less then straight men. Unfortunately you need access to JStor to read it online but here's the link:

http://econpapers.repec.org/article/ilrarticl/v_3a54_3ay_3a2001_3ai_3a3_3ap_3a631-646.htm

For more on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, search the labor econ literature on http://econpapers.repec.org or http://scholar.google.com. You can also hit the BLS site for tables of wages and other labor market gaps by demographics from the Current Population Survey at http://bls.gov/cps/earnings.htm#demographics