How a Nobel Laureate Winner Helped Score Record Pay for WNBA Union

The front page of today’s (3/31) The Wall Street Journal highlighted the wonderful act by Claudia Goldin, who was the first woman to win a solo Nobel in economics. Specifically, Miss Goldin advised the WNBA players union to negotiate a new labor deal with the league.

This month the two sides reached a collective bargaining agreement that gave the women close to a 400% raise. Starting this season, players’ average salary will top $580,000—this is the biggest increase any union anywhere has ever negotiated. Mike Bass, a spokesman who represents both the National Basketball Association and the NBNA, called the deal “transformational.”

Goldin has a deep knowledge of women’s pay. She has spent years rifling through boxes of surveys and personal records and tracking down data to document women’s changing role in the workplace.

The research included the role that discrimination plays in pay gaps between men and women. Goldin won a Nobel prize for advancing the understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.

Goldin, who earned a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago economics department in 1972, became the first tenured woman in Harvard’s economics department.

In early 2024 when she was approached by the WNBA, the average NBA player made $12 million. In contrast, the average WNBA player made $118,000, less than 1% of the men.

Goldin looked at player’s average compensation, salaries plus benefits, like housing.

To put the media rights deals in perspective, the WNBA was $2.2 billion vs. the NBA deal of $75 billion. The media rights deals are 11-year contracts that were finalized in July 2024. This was discriminatory given the growing popularity of women’s basketball.

Ms. Goldin, who did not get paid for her work, obtained another attractive offer. She got an invitation to throw out the ceremonial pitch at a Red Sox game! While Goldin grew up a Yankees fan, she has lived in Boston for 30 years and therefore, switched her allegiance to the Red Sox. Goldin said the cheering of thousands of Red Sox fans was “bigger than getting the Nobel!”