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You might think that one of the major urban centers of the Left Coast would be more progressive on ensuring wage parity between women and men in the workplace. You鈥檇 be wrong. In general, women in the greater Seattle area make just 78.6 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make. That鈥檚 on par with the national average.

But here鈥檚 where the numbers get crazy.

The 78.6 cents figure comes from the , an annual poll conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Seattle company mined the survey data for patterns that weren鈥檛 immediately obvious.

鈥淭here鈥檚 been a real discussion around gender gap and pay,鈥� says Adnan Mahmud, LiveStories鈥� founder and chief executive. 鈥淲e wondered if there was data in our library that would prove or disprove this data.鈥� The company鈥檚 business is to make data from large public databases such as the Census more accessible. In one sense, the gender pay report was selected as a way of showcasing the startup鈥檚 technology.

Then they found a surprise hiding in the data:  nearly inversely correlates to women鈥檚 level of education.

In other words, the higher the degree a woman has, the larger gap in pay exists between her and men with the same level of education.

Seattle women with just a high school diploma or equivalent make 84 cents for every dollar earned by men at the same educational level. The gap increases from there: College graduates make 72 cents to the man-dollar, and women with graduate or professional degrees make 68 cents to the man-dollar.

That鈥檚 not a universal trend: LiveStories compared Seattle with Baltimore, Boston, Denver, and Nashville鈥攁ll cities of similar size鈥攁nd found that the effect was most pronounced in Seattle.

U.S. women earn about 83 percent of what men do.

One factor may be the local technology industry, which is largely male and has produced an enormous amount of wealth in the area. But Boston also has a vibrant technology industry, and it doesn鈥檛 show the same increase in pay disparity at higher education levels.

鈥淚n Seattle, you wouldn鈥檛 expect that gap to widen. In tech, you鈥檇 think there鈥檚 a desire to be seen otherwise,鈥� Mahmud says.

One problem in understanding this gap-within-a-gap probably stems from the fact that the gender pay gap exists for many reasons in the first place.

According to the  of 2015 ACS data, U.S. women earn about 83 percent of what men do. That鈥檚 improved since 1980, when women earned just 64 percent of what men did.

Women make up 77.7 percent of the workforce in the personal care and services sector.

Two major factors in the gap can be attributed to parenting or other familial responsibilities, which traditionally have fallen to women, and educational and occupational choices.

In the first case, the 鈥渕otherhood penalty鈥� manifests in interrupted careers, reduced working hours, and decreased future earnings. The disparity in choice of profession exists in part because occupations that typically skew male, such as engineering or finance, pay more than those traditionally seen as 鈥渨omen鈥檚 jobs,鈥� such as teaching and social services.

But the disparity exists even within those women-dominated professions. Women make up 77.7 percent of the workforce in the personal care and services sector, for example, and still make 77.8 percent of what men in that profession do.

Neither of those factors taken singly or together accounts for the entire gender gap.

The study, 鈥�,鈥� highlighted that even after accounting for 鈥渃ollege major, economic sector, hours worked, months unemployed since graduation, GPA, type of undergraduate institution, institution selectivity, age, geographical region, and marital status, AAUW found a remaining 7 percent difference between the earnings of male and female college graduates one year after graduation.鈥�

That gender disparity transcends racial boundaries.

That 7 percent difference is likely only explainable by discrimination and bias. (It鈥檚 hard to prove because discrimination is identifiable only by the absence of parity after excluding all other explanations.)

That gender disparity transcends racial boundaries, although the largest difference is when comparing White women to White men: the women make 79.6 percent of men鈥檚 earnings.

When comparing women and men of other races, the disparity narrows. Asian women make 81.5 cents for every dollar made by Asian men, for example. For Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders, it鈥檚 83.8 cents, for Native American women, 87.2 cents, and for Black women, it鈥檚 90 cents per dollar. Hispanic/Latino women make 92.2 cents per dollar.

Better parity within those ethnic groups is at the cost of increased inequality across races: Black men make just 74.4 percent what White men do, so that 10-cent difference within the Black community still starts from a baseline 25 percent below what White employees make.

Another clue may lie in the ACS  for gender wage gap, in which Washington ranks 25th out of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

That showing isn鈥檛 great, and the AAUW report points to some possible contributing factors, including that Washington is one of 14 states with comparatively weak equal pay laws, while 28 states have what it calls 鈥渕oderate鈥� laws, and only six have 鈥渟trong鈥� laws. (Two states, Alabama and Mississippi, have none.)

What makes a law strong include rules that prohibit employers from asking about salary history (as in the case of Massachusetts), limiting the number of excuses to not pay men and women equally (California), prohibiting 鈥渕ommy tracking鈥� into lower-paying jobs or career paths (Maryland) or imposing high fines or damage payments on violators (Tennessee). Among states with weaker laws are Louisiana, where they only apply to public sector employees, and Arizona, which doesn鈥檛 prohibit retaliation against employees who take action.

None of this quite gets at what makes Seattle an outlier for highly educated women. Is it a factor of the technology industry, Washington state鈥檚 labor law, or something else. There is no easy explanation.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 have one right now,鈥� Mahmud says. 鈥淲e thought that, because we were surprised, we thought other people would be surprised too.鈥�

LiveStories鈥� new report on the Seattle Gender Pay Gap can be found .