Opinion ID: 501743
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: disparate treatment--wage discrimination

Text: 111 The EEOC attempted to prove, again almost solely by statistical (multiple regression) analyses, that Sears discriminated against women employed in checklist management positions by paying them less than men with similar jobs. Checklist employees at Sears are salaried executive management, professional, and administrative employees. 112 Although the EEOC originally brought wage discrimination claims under both the Equal Pay Act and Title VII, it later dropped its claims under the Equal Pay Act. A preliminary issue is whether the district court correctly held that the EEOC in this case had to meet the equal work standard of the Equal Pay Act 42 to prove a case of Title VII sex discrimination in pay. The EEOC claims that the district court incorrectly interpreted County of Washington v. Gunther, 452 U.S. 161, 101 S.Ct. 2242, 68 L.Ed.2d 751 (1981), in which the Supreme Court held that a Title VII plaintiff could in certain circumstances bring a claim of wage discrimination without meeting the equal work standard of the EPA. The EEOC argues that the district court mistakenly held that this case was not within the purview of Gunther, and therefore erred in requiring it to prove that men and women had substantially equal jobs in its Title VII pay discrimination claim. We believe the district court accurately recognized the limited scope of Gunther and correctly determined that this case fell outside that scope. 113 Before Gunther, courts determined that to construe Title VII harmoniously with the EPA in addressing wage discrimination claims, Title VII plaintiffs alleging discrimination in pay would have to meet the equal work standard of the EPA. See Plemer v. Parsons-Gilbane, 713 F.2d 1127, 1131 (5th Cir.1983); see, e.g., DiSalvo v. Chamber of Commerce, 568 F.2d 593, 596 (8th Cir.1978); Orr v. Frank R. MacNeill & Son, 511 F.2d 166, 171 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 865, 96 S.Ct. 125, 46 L.Ed.2d 94 (1975); Ammons v. Zia Co., 448 F.2d 117, 119-20 (10th Cir.1971). 114 In Gunther, female prison guards could not meet the equal work standard of the EPA because their jobs involved guarding substantially fewer female prisoners than male prison guards guarding male prisoners, and female prisoners were less dangerous than male inmates. The Supreme Court found it significant, however, that the female guards alleged that a comparable worth study commissioned by Washington County showed the female guards should be paid 95% of what male guards were paid. The female guards also alleged that they were only paid 70% of what the male guards received, and that this difference in treatment constituted intentional sex discrimination. The Court held that in such a case, the female guards did not have to meet the equal work standards of the EPA to prove intentional sex discrimination in pay under Title VII. Gunther, 452 U.S. at 180-81, 101 S.Ct. at 2253. 115 The EEOC argues that the district court erred in refusing to relax the EPA equal work standard by not applying Gunther to this case. Our reading of Gunther and subsequent interpretations of that case convinces us, however, that the district court correctly determined that this Title VII wage discrimination claim does not fall within the scope of Gunther. 116 The district court did not, as the EEOC suggests, limit Gunther to its facts by recognizing that the Gunther court was careful to limit the scope of its own decision. This is evident at several passages of the Gunther opinion. The Gunther court emphasize[d] at the outset the narrowness of the question before [it] in [that] case, which was whether the female prison guards' claim, based on direct evidence that their wages were depressed because of intentional sex discrimination, (not a comparable worth claim), precluded their proceeding under Title VII because they could not meet the equal work standard of the EPA. Gunther, 452 U.S. at 166 & n. 8, 101 S.Ct. at 2246 & n. 8. That intentional sex discrimination, according to the Court, consisted of setting the wage scale for female guards, but not for male guards, at a level lower than its own survey of outside markets and the worth of the jobs warranted. Id. at 166, 101 S.Ct. at 2246. The Court ended its opinion by emphasizing that its decision did not threaten the wage structure of every employer by allowing Title VII plaintiffs to compare job content and pay  'between any job predominantly performed by women and any job predominantly performed by men,'  because the suit in that case did not require a court to make its own subjective assessment of the value of the male and female guard jobs, or to attempt by statistical technique or other method to quantify the effect of sex discrimination on the wage rates. Id. at 180-81, 101 S.Ct. at 2253 (quoting petitioners' brief). 117 This court analyzed the contours of Gunther in American Nurses' Association v. State of Illinois, 783 F.2d 716, 720-22 (7th Cir.1986). We emphasized the narrowness of that holding, stating that 118 [a]ll that [Gunther ] seems to mean, as the dissenting Justices pointed out, is that even absent a showing of equal work, there is a cause of action under Title VII when there is direct evidence that an employer has intentionally depressed a woman's salary because she is a woman. The decision today does not approve a cause of action based on a comparison of the wage rates of dissimilar jobs. 119 Id. at 721 (quoting Gunther, 452 U.S. at 204, 101 S.Ct. at 2265 (emphasis in original)). We also discussed American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees v. Washington, 770 F.2d 1401 (9th Cir.1985) (AFSCME ), as an example of a case in which there was insufficient evidence to establish Title VII sex discrimination in wages for different work. 120 In AFSCME, the state paid prevailing market rates as wages to its employees and after commissioning comparative worth studies, discovered that employees in jobs held mainly by women were paid approximately 80% of wages received by employees in predominantly male jobs considered to be of comparable worth. The AFSCME sued the state, alleging that the state discriminated against women by not having a compensation system based on comparative worth. The Ninth Circuit held that job evaluation studies and comparable worth statistics alone are insufficient to establish the requisite inference of discriminatory motive, that it was not discriminatory to pay salaries at the prevailing wage rates, and that the state was not committed to implement a new system of compensation based on comparable worth as defined by the study it had commissioned. Id. at 1406-08. 121 The EEOC contends that the key distinction between AFSCME and Gunther is that in AFSCME, the employer had not adopted the comparable worth study, 43 but in Gunther, the employer had adopted it (and, as the Gunther Court found, paid women employees at a rate less than the comparable worth study had valued the job). The EEOC argues that this case is like Gunther because Sears had made a comparable worth study in the form of the Hay evaluations and had adopted the results of the study in its Executive Compensation Program. We do not think the distinction turns on whether an employer has adopted a compensation program in response to a comparable worth study. That factor may be part of the consideration, but the key distinction is whether the implementation of the compensation program in response to the study reflects discriminatory intent. As we noted in American Nurses', [t]he critical thing lacking in AFSCME was evidence that the [employer] decided not to raise the wages of particular workers because most of those workers were female. 783 F.2d at 722 (emphasis in original); see also Plemer v. Parsons-Gilbane, 713 F.2d 1127, 1133-34 (5th Cir.1983) (Fifth Circuit found it significant that in Gunther it was shown that the employers unexplainedly departed from objective pay criteria they had adopted). Thus a comparable worth study is relevant in proving sex discrimination because it may provide the occasion on which the employer is forced to declare his intentions toward his female employees. American Nurses', 783 F.2d at 721; see also Merrill v. Southern Methodist University, 806 F.2d 600, 606 (5th Cir.1986) (court hesitated to find intentional discrimination because evidence was not like that in Gunther, i.e., plaintiff did not suggest that employer failed to abide by preannounced (or otherwise adopted) objective pay criteria). 122 We believe that this case does not fit within the contours of Gunther because although Sears implemented its Executive Compensation Program after the Hay job evaluations, the EEOC has not alleged or proved that this implementation evidenced Sears' discriminatory motive or intent. The EEOC never argued in district court that Sears' 1976 implementation of the Executive Compensation Program was discriminatory. The district court found that Sears' witnesses testified very convincingly that sex was not a factor in establishing the Executive Compensation Program with Hay Associates in 1976, or in determining at any time the pay of checklist employees. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1352. Furthermore, the court found no evidence of discriminatory intent. 123 The EEOC also argues that the district court improperly required it to show direct evidence of discriminatory intent, because the circumstantial evidence provided by statistics was sufficient to indicate Sears' intent to discriminate against women in pay. As we discuss later, we do not find clearly erroneous the district court's decision that the EEOC's pay statistics did not prove discrimination. Even if we agreed that the statistics showed discrimination, we are not at all sure that this type of indirect, statistical evidence of discriminatory intent would be sufficient under Gunther. The evidence in Gunther was clear and straightforward. The comparable worth study results valued women's guard jobs at 95% of men's guard jobs, but women guards were paid at 70% of men guards' salaries. The Gunther court emphasized that its holding was limited to such direct evidence and that it was not a case in which a court would have to subjectively determine the value of male and female jobs 44 or to attempt by statistical technique or other method to quantify the effect of sex discrimination on the wage rates. Gunther, 452 U.S. at 180-81, 101 S.Ct. at 2253. The dissenting Justices in Gunther saw the case as creating a cause of action under Title VII when there is direct evidence that an employer has intentionally depressed a woman's salary because she is a woman. The decision today does not approve a cause of action based on a comparison of the wage rates of dissimilar jobs. Id. at 204, 101 S.Ct. at 2265 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (emphasis in original and added). 124 We believe that the district court correctly determined that the EEOC did not show the type of direct evidence of intentional sex discrimination in pay contemplated by the Gunther Court, and thus the EEOC had to meet the equal pay standard of the EPA to prove its Title VII sex discrimination in wages claim. 45 125 A brief overview of Sears' compensation practices for employees in checklist pay positions during the period at issue is helpful to our discussion of whether the EEOC met the equal work standard in its claim of sex discrimination in wages. 46 Sears had two different compensation systems for checklist employees during the period 1973 to 1980. From 1973 to 1975, job content, salaries, and bonuses varied significantly among different geographic regions and facilities due to Sears' high decentralization and emphasis on individual store autonomy. Initially, Sears had job titles called C codes, but those codes did not reflect job content during 1973-1975 because the codes were imprecise from the first, and because unit managers had assigned different and additional duties over the years depending on work and the checklist employees' talents. Checklist employees' salaries and bonuses depended to a great extent on the discretion and generosity of the managers at the local levels. Regarding salaries, although there were some salary guidelines, store managers usually negotiated with employees, and made recommendations to regional managers who usually accepted those recommendations. 47 Because of Sears' policy of paying the person and not the position, salaries were based on a number of factors including the employee's prior work history and salary, potential with the company, job performance, and the number of times an employee relocated (the latter of which involved substantial salary increases). Virtually all checklist employees were eligible for annual bonuses, the size of which depended greatly on the generosity of regional managers which varied widely, as well as on the employee's performance and total earnings. The court found that all of the above factors influencing the compensation of checklist employees caused substantial differences in compensation among checklist employees of both sexes. 126 In 1976 Sears introduced a new Executive Compensation Program, which the district court found was in response to checklist employees' perceptions of the system as inequitable and unwieldy and reflected management's desire for a system that would be competitive in the marketplace, have internal equity, and reward individual performance. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1336. This Program was the culmination of two years of Sears' cooperation with Hay Associates in evaluating Sears' compensation practices. Sears used the Hay Guide Chart-Profile Method of Evaluation to evaluate jobs. The manner in which evaluators actually assessed jobs is important to determining whether the EEOC met the equal work standard, so we will go into more detail on this point. 127 Hay consultants and Hay-trained Sears employees wrote position descriptions based on the duties of an average performer of the job, for each position at Sears. Committee members, drawn from various levels at Sears, analyzed the position descriptions and systematically evaluated the content of those positions, attempting to incorporate Sears' changes in job content and structure which were part of the new system along the way, so that the positions were not actually analyzed as they were performed before or at the time of evaluation. The committees assigned each position points for the know-how, problem solving, and accountability it entailed. Sears structured salary ranges in which positions were compensated according to relative evaluation points. Sears set salary ranges with a minimum, midpoint, and maximum (going from 75% to 120% of a midpoint salary) for each position in 1976, and modified annually. 128 The court found that even after the implementation of the Executive Compensation Program and its set salary ranges, other factors such as performance evaluations, previous job history, number of relocations, seniority, geographic location, and the individual discretion of managers regarding timing and size of salary increases still influenced the salaries of individual checklist employees. The court also found that the process of phasing in the new program took several years because of Sears' policy of not reducing an employee's pay. Salary increases for employees above the maximum were cut until they came within the range. The court found that not only were salaries not standardized for several years after implementation of the Executive Compensation Program, but the company did not formally change actual job structures immediately upon implementing the program. The court found that Sears gradually communicated changes to employees over a period of years. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1337. Job activities were standardized through an informal communication of changes to employees that involved changes in job evaluations and creation of new job categories. 129 The EEOC had the burden of meeting the equal work standard of the Equal Pay Act. EEOC v. Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, 709 F.2d 1195, 1197 (7th Cir.1983). That standard provides that an employer may not discriminate on the basis of sex by paying unequal wages for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions. 29 U.S.C. Sec. 206(d)(1). To succeed, the EEOC must establish, based upon 'actual job performance and content--not job titles, classifications or descriptions' that the work performed ... is substantially equal. Mercy Hospital, 709 F.2d at 1197 (quoting Gunther v. County of Washington, 623 F.2d 1303, 1309 (9th Cir.1979), aff'd, 452 U.S. 161, 101 S.Ct. 2242, 68 L.Ed.2d 751 (1981)). 130 The district court found that the EEOC, in attempting to prove substantial equality of the jobs at issue, did not introduce any credible evidence of job performance or content. 48 Instead, the EEOC relied on the job descriptions that emanated from Sears' Hay Guide Chart-Profile Method of job evaluations to prove substantial equality. The EEOC contended that the factors measured by the Hay Method--problem solving, know-how, and accountability--were the equivalent of the EPA factors skill, effort, and responsibility, and that if Sears jobs received an equal number of points (for problem solving, know-how, and accountability), which would then place those jobs in the same salary range, the jobs would be substantially equal under the EPA's equal work standard. The district court found, EEOC therefore relies on Sears' own analysis of its job categories and codes completed in 1976 as proof that the persons in each 1976 job code were performing substantially similar work. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1338. 131 The EEOC's method of comparing jobs from 1973-1975 was somewhat different. The EEOC recognized that it could not rely on the C codes assigned to various jobs, because those codes were not valid indicators of job content. The EEOC thus worked backward from the 1976 job codes, trying to develop correspondences between C job codes and 1976 job codes. Because there were many 1976 job codes associated with one C code, the process of determining correspondences involved subjective judgments by the EEOC, based on patterns of movement among jobs without any knowledge of job content. Many employees were left out of the 1973-1975 analyses because the EEOC worked backwards, comparing the 1976 job codes of persons who had not been promoted or transferred in 1976 with C job codes of those persons at year-end in 1975. To be counted in 1974, for example, an employee had to have been in the same C job code in 1974 and in 1975. 132 The district court found that the EEOC failed to prove by the above methods substantial equality of the jobs at issue for any year. We may not disturb this finding unless we determine that it is clearly erroneous. See Epstein v. Secretary, United States Department of the Treasury, 739 F.2d 274, 277 (7th Cir.1984); Mercy Hospital, 709 F.2d at 1198. Because we have reviewed all the evidence and are not left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed, United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 542, 92 L.Ed.2d 746 (1948), we affirm the district court's finding that the EEOC did not meet the equal work standard. 133 The EEOC argues that the district court improperly held as a matter of law that job evaluations such as the Hay Method are not probative of job equality. The EEOC has mischaracterized the district court. The court actually found that 134 [a]lthough the Hay evaluation of the position description developed by committees would be helpful in determining whether jobs are substantially equal, they are not a substitute for proof of actual performance.... Without proof of actual job performance and content, the Hay evaluations of position descriptions are inadequate to prove equal skill, effort and responsibility. 135 Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1342. 136 The EEOC cites numerous cases in support of its contention that job titles and descriptions are probative of job equality even without any corroborative evidence of job content or job performance. We recognize that language in the cases cited suggests that job titles and descriptions are probative and even may, in some instances, be highly probative of equal work because one would expect that actual responsibilities would, to some extent, conform to a job description. Epstein, 739 F.2d at 277 n. 6; see also Pearce v. Wichita County, 590 F.2d 128, 133 (5th Cir.1979) (Although job titles are entitled to some weight in the assessment of comparative responsibility, a comparison of actual duties is controlling.); Brennan v. Owensboro-Daviess County Hospital, 523 F.2d 1013, 1017 (6th Cir.1975) (Although job descriptions should not be accorded as much weight as that given to the duties actually performed by employees in determining whether two jobs are substantially equal, nevertheless, we believe that they may be helpful, particularly where the descriptions of the jobs to be compared are similar and were written by the very employer who claims that wage differentials are not based on an impermissible criterion.), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 973, 96 S.Ct. 2170, 48 L.Ed.2d 796 (1976); Brennan v. Victoria Bank & Trust Co., 493 F.2d 896, 899 (5th Cir.1974) (the controlling factor ... has to be job content, not the job description prepared by the employer, [but] the employer's rating of jobs [should not] be ignored simply because the employer made it, especially where, as here, the rating came after an extensive study of comparative qualifications, degrees of responsibility, and chances of loss to the Bank. (emphasis in original)). 137 None of these cases, however, supports the EEOC's contention that job titles and descriptions alone, without any corroborating evidence of job content or job performance, can prove job equality. In each case, the court recognized that job content was the controlling factor and believed it was necessary to go beyond job titles and/or descriptions to compare and contrast actual duties and job content. See Epstein, 739 F.2d at 278-80; Pearce, 590 F.2d at 133-34; Owensboro-Daviess, 523 F.2d at 1015-28; Victoria Bank, 493 F.2d at 899-900. In some cases, the court of appeals went through an extended analysis of the differences and similarities in duties and job content. See Owensboro-Daviess, 523 F.2d at 1025-28; (comparing duties of hospital aides and orderlies); Victoria Bank, 493 F.2d at 899-900 (contrasting duties of exchange tellers and note tellers); see also EEOC v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1, 620 F.2d 1220, 1225-26 (7th Cir.1980) (contrasting duties of predominantly female cleaners and predominantly male custodians); Horner v. Mary Institute, 613 F.2d 706, 713-15 (8th Cir.1980) (contrasting duties of male and female physical education teachers). As we noted in Epstein, 739 F.2d at 277 n. 6, [s]imilar job descriptions alone ... do not require a finding of substantial equality of jobs under the Equal Pay Act. Indeed, identical or similar job titles can be deceiving because they do not reflect the actual duties underlying the title. See Horner, 613 F.2d at 714-15 (although superficially identical, male and female physical education jobs not substantially equal in terms of skill or responsibility); see also Angelo v. Bacharach Instrument Co., 555 F.2d 1164, 1172 (3d Cir.1977) ( '[m]echanical and surface similarities' are inadequate to establish the equality of two positions (quoting 109 Cong.Rec. 9196 (1963) (remarks of Rep. Frelinghuysen))); Victoria Bank, 493 F.2d at 899-900 (duties dissimilar between bank's note tellers and exchange tellers). 138 The EEOC argues that producing individual comparisons of job performance and content at trial was not feasible considering the size of the record and that the trial took six months of the district court's docket time. This is an unconvincing excuse, especially in light of the substantial body of case law involving the equal work standard in which courts have invariably gone beyond job descriptions to analyze, often in-depth, actual job duties and job performance. The EEOC implies that it might have wasted the court's time by introducing such evidence. The case might actually have been shorter and more effective, however, if the EEOC had introduced the right kind of evidence or tried the case in accordance with precedent. As it turns out, the EEOC's failure to introduce any evidence of actual job content or job performance is fatal to its sex discrimination in wages claim in light of Sears' evidence regarding differences in job content. 139 The EEOC appears to suggest that Sears had the burden of showing the inequality of job content. This line of argument is similar to that which we recognized in Epstein, 739 F.2d at 278: Plaintiff would, it seems, have us infer equal work from the defendants' failure to prove otherwise. We responded that this argument 140 ignores the elementary fact that the burden for proving the prima facie case is on the plaintiff. The plaintiff has not pointed to any record evidence, except the job descriptions, which would tend to show equal work, and on our review of the record we agree with the district court that the record is devoid of any such evidence. 141 Id. Unlike the defendant in Epstein, however, Sears did introduce evidence of differences in job content. The court found that Sears has shown through credible testimony that there were differences in job content of employees with the same job code. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1342. The court also found that Sears showed the Hay Method evaluated idealized position descriptions, but in actuality job changes were phased in over a period of years after implementation of the Executive Compensation Program, and indeed, differences in job content and performance existed in early 1986. Neither of these findings are clearly erroneous. 142 The district court concluded that because the EEOC did not respond to Sears' evidence of differences in job content with any evidence of job performance or content to show that the differences were not significant, the EEOC did not sustain its burden of proving substantial equality of the jobs analyzed. We find ample support in the record for this conclusion. The rule is well established that the application of the equal pay standard depends on actual job requirements and job performance. Angelo v. Bacharach Instrument Co., 555 F.2d 1164, 1173 (3d Cir.1977); see 51 Fed.Reg. 29,822 (1986) (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1620.13(e)) (Application of the equal pay standard is not dependent on job classifications or titles but depends rather on actual job requirements and performance.). The EEOC asserts that the test is substantial equality, and argues that we should not make overly fine distinctions in the tasks at issue. Brennan v. South Davis Community Hospital, 538 F.2d 859, 861 (10th Cir.1976). The EEOC has produced no evidence of job content or performance that would even permit us to draw distinctions between jobs. Such evidence would have allowed the district court to compare jobs in terms of the Equal Pay Act factors of skill, effort, and responsibility. Because the EEOC introduced no job content evidence, it in essence asks us to speculate whether the differences in job content brought out by Sears are minor or significant. We may not do so when the EEOC has the burden of proving in the district court the substantial equality of the jobs at issue. Job content evidence would also have indicated whether the Hay Method factors of accountability, problem solving, and know-how are actually equivalents of the Equal Pay Act factors of skill, effort, and responsibility. 143 We need not determine whether job descriptions based on a job evaluation such as the Hay Method can alone, without any corroborating evidence of actual job content, establish substantial job equality, because we hold in light of Sears' unrebutted evidence of unequal job content, the district court's finding that the EEOC had not sustained its burden of proving substantial equality is not clearly erroneous. 144 Assuming that job descriptions could have persuasive value in the face of Sears' credible evidence of differences in job content, we agree with the district court that the job descriptions resulting from the Hay Method job evaluations in the circumstances of this case lacked probative value as evidence of substantial equality under the EPA's equal work standard. 145 The Hay Method, which evaluates jobs on the basis of accountability, know-how, and problem solving, does not measure jobs in terms of the statutory [EPA] standards of skill, effort, responsibility, and equal working conditions. 49 Marshall v. J.C. Penney Co., 464 F.Supp. 1166, 1191 (N.D.Ohio 1979); see Wheeler v. Armco Steel Corp., 471 F.Supp. 1050, 1052 (S.D.Tex.1979) (Hay system is not evidence of a job being equal in skill, effort and responsibility). Federal regulations state that the fact that jobs ... may have the same total point value under an evaluation system in use by the employer does not in itself mean that the jobs concerned are equal according to the terms of the statute. 51 Fed.Reg. 29,822 (1986) (emphasis added) (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1620.13(e)). On appeal, the EEOC asserts that the Hay factors are virtually identical to the statutory factors, but cites to nothing in the record where it attempted to equate the two sets of factors, showing how the point values in the Hay evaluation system could be equivalent to an analysis using the statutory factors. 50 146 In addition, the district court found that the Hay Method was an inaccurate means of measuring job equality in a number of instances in this case because of various errors by Sears in the evaluation process. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1342. These errors, which resulted in employees classified into job codes that did not correspond to their duties, led the court to conclude that the EEOC, who relied on Sears' faulty analysis of these jobs, had not proved substantial equality of jobs in four of the fifty-one job codes. We cannot say that finding is clearly erroneous. 147 The failure of EEOC's reliance on job descriptions emanating from the Hay Evaluation Method in proving substantial equality is exacerbated in the years 1973 to 1975. Sears' label artificial workforce, used to describe the results of the EEOC's tracing back method, is not altogether inappropriate. The record amply supports the district court's findings that the correspondences between various C code jobs and 1976 job codes were based on patterns of movement without taking job content into consideration. The EEOC introduced no other credible evidence regarding job content for those years, and because of the EEOC's tracing back method, substantial numbers of employees (those who transferred, left Sears, or were promoted, even to corresponding jobs), were excluded from the analysis. The court did not clearly err in concluding that the EEOC failed to prove substantial equality during 1973-1975, and even if it could prove substantial equality, its analysis failed to create a reasonable inference of a nationwide pattern or practice of sex discrimination by Sears. 148 Our analysis of the EEOC's claim of Title VII sex discrimination in wages for checklist employees at Sears can end here because the EEOC has failed to satisfy its burden of proof regarding the equal work standard. See Spaulding v. University of Washington, 740 F.2d 686, 700 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1036, 105 S.Ct. 511, 83 L.Ed.2d 401 (1984) (We will not ... infer intent merely from the existence of wage differences between jobs that are only similar.); cf. Horner v. Mary Institute, 613 F.2d 706, 715 (8th Cir.1980) (if plaintiff has failed to establish substantial equality, any wage disparity is irrelevant under the Equal Pay Act). We also note, however, that the district court's finding that the EEOC had not proved sex discrimination in wages through its flawed multiple regression analyses is not clearly erroneous. 149 Although EEOC's expert Siskin performed two multiple regression analyses incorporating different sets of variables, he relied on only one regression analysis to support his conclusion that significant wage disparities existed. The district court held that EEOC's statistical analyses [were] so flawed that they lack[ed] any persuasive value. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1342. We reiterate that the court's findings regarding statistical evidence are accorded even more deference than typical findings of fact, which are subject to the clearly erroneous standard of review. Soria v. Ozinga Brothers, Inc., 704 F.2d 990, 995 n. 6 (7th Cir.1983). 150 The EEOC states on appeal that the district court's conclusions regarding its regression analyses exhibit an irrational belief that statistical proof is not adequate to model Sears' 'complex' decision making process. We disagree. We believe that the district court correctly recognized the limits of regression analysis. Our review of the court's careful and considered discussion of the EEOC's statistical evidence reveals that the court was not overawed by the results of the statistical analysis, but instead had a healthy distrust of the ability of regression analyses to explain the factors involved in management salary decisions. Such a skepticism may be justified. Coates v. Johnson & Johnson, 756 F.2d 524, 539 (7th Cir.1985); see Lewis v. Bloomsburg Mills, Inc., 773 F.2d 561, 578 (4th Cir.1985) (remanding case for a more complete factual finding, court stated it was not suggest[ing] that there may not be a plausible basis for rejecting ... statistical evidence or ... finding it not sufficiently probative of the claim); Mozee v. Jeffboat, Inc., 746 F.2d 365, 371 (7th Cir.1984) (court noted that frequently subjective and other intangible factors may influence employment decisions and that even subjective misjudgments may not necessarily be the basis for Title VII liability (emphasis in original)); Allen v. Prince George's County, 737 F.2d 1299, 1305 (4th Cir.1984) (Courts have not always admitted multiple regression [salary] analyses, and when admitted, they have sometimes been used as an aid to the understanding of the parties' position, rather than as probative of what they purport to show.); Fisher, Multiple Regression in Legal Proceedings, 80 Colum.L.Rev. 702, 714 (1980) (multiple regression analysis may be helpful in certain circumstances, but it is not a substitute for thought). The court definitely did not show an outright hostility toward statistics, as the EEOC suggests. 151 The court recognized two specific limitations, among others, that we believe illustrate the court's careful consideration of the limitations of regression analyses and which we cannot say are clearly erroneous. First, the court noted that if important variables are omitted from the model, the effect of sex on compensation estimated by the model will be artificially inflated because the dependent variable sex will reflect not only any effect of sex, but also the residual effect of the omitted variables that affect salary. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1344. Second, the court found significant a Sears case study that compared the salaries of two male checklist employees with very similar employment histories. The salaries of these employees differed by as much as $600 per month, but Sears' multiple regression model could not explain the difference in salary. The court noted, [i]f these employees had been of different sexes, much of this salary disparity would have been attributed to sex discrimination. Id. at 1348. 152 We also believe the district court appropriately considered the statistical analyses according to the spirit of the Supreme Court's recent opinion Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385, 106 S.Ct. 3000, 92 L.Ed.2d 315 (1986). The district court here did not, as the Bazemore Court found deficient in that court of appeals' treatment of a regression analysis, hold a regression analysis unacceptable as evidence solely because it did not include 'all measurable variables thought to have an effect on salary level.'  Id. at 3009. The district court here found several defects, which we discuss briefly below, that affect[ed] the analysis' probativeness, not its admissibility. Id.; see Griffin v. Board of Regents, 795 F.2d 1281, 1290 n. 16 (7th Cir.1986) (Multiple regression analysis is likely to be inappropriate ... unless the model includes all of the major variables likely to have an effect on the dependent variable.); Eastland v. TVA, 704 F.2d 613, 623 (11th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 465 U.S. 1066, 104 S.Ct. 1415, 79 L.Ed.2d 741 (1984). As the Supreme Court noted, [w]hether, in fact, such a regression analysis does carry the plaintiffs' ultimate burden will depend in a given case on the factual context of each case in light of all the evidence presented by both the plaintiff and the defendant. Bazemore, 106 S.Ct. at 3009 (emphasis added). The court did consider all the evidence and properly took into account the limits and probative value of the statistical analyses. 153 We hold that the district court's findings underlying its conclusions that the EEOC's regression analysis was flawed are not clearly erroneous. We briefly address the EEOC's most serious criticisms of those findings. First, the court found that the data base underlying EEOC's regression analysis was inaccurate. The EEOC challenges this finding by asserting that the data were unavailable. Sears showed, however, that some of the data were indeed available to the EEOC (on paper records regarding individual Sears employees instead of on Sears' computerized personnel tapes, on which the EEOC exclusively relied) and that the EEOC for some unexplained reason did not analyze the paper records. In addition, Sears demonstrated that the data indeed made a difference in the results of the regression analyses. The district court did not clearly err in determining that the EEOC's regression analysis was entitled to less weight because of the inaccurate and incomplete data underlying that analysis. 154 The EEOC argues that certain variables the court found the EEOC should have included in its regression analyses were not job related or correlated with salary. Although we will not go so far as to say that the EEOC should have included the factor of pre-Sears experience, because data on that were not available to either Sears or the EEOC, we agree with the district court that prior time-card responsibility and the number of employee relocations were variables that the EEOC should have included in its analysis. There is ample evidence, including testimony in the record, and also case law, indicating that these omitted factors have a bearing on salary. The EEOC refers to one of its exhibits that purports to show that certain variables do not correlate with salaries because they do not, individually, have a bearing on the statistical analysis. This may be an acceptable method of testing the correlation of a variable with salary. See Coates v. Johnson & Johnson, 756 F.2d 524, 546 (7th Cir.1985) ( '[t]he size and statistical significance of the controversial qualification will illuminate the question of whether the qualification was in fact considered'  (quoting D. Baldus & J. Cole, Statistical Proof of Discrimination Sec. 8.23, at 100 (Supp.1984)); Gwartney, Asher, Haworth & Haworth, Statistics, the Law and Title VII: An Economist's View, 54 Notre Dame Law. 633, 657 (1979) (If a potential skill factor is not related to the employment opportunities offered by the employer, the variable will be statistically unrelated to earnings. In contrast, when statistical analysis illustrates a consistent link between the skill factor and higher earnings, this constitutes evidence that the skill factor is job-related.). Sears has identified a problem with this reasoning, however, and we have our own doubts. Sears contends that it is misleading to identify the effect of individual variables on salary, because some variables jointly contributed to influence salary. Furthermore, the EEOC appears to argue that because a factor is not job related, it must be gender-correlated and therefore skews the results because the variable diminishes the effect the sex variable would otherwise have had. However, the EEOC cites no part of the record that would support that idea. It seems to us that even if a factor was gender-correlated, if it is a neutral, legitimate factor such as the number of job relocations (which proportionately more men than women had), and evidence indicated that that factor had an effect on salary, that factor should be included in the regression. 155 The EEOC attempts to sidestep the district court's finding regarding defects in the EEOC's regression model, arguing that Sears' model had similar and even greater defects. We need only address one aspect of the court's criticisms of the EEOC's model to affirm the court's finding. The district court found that the most important flaw in the EEOC's model is that it aggregated data nationwide (because only a few employees occupied some jobs on a more local level), when salary decisions at Sears were made at the local level and decisionmakers at that level had considerable discretion. Sears' analyses showed that wage disparities differed by territory. The EEOC argues that every salary decision had to be approved by the territorial office, but Sears refuted this contention. The court did not clearly err in this determination. The EEOC could have analyzed local salary decisions through a case study approach, but it chose not to do so. 156 Briefly, we note that we also do not consider clearly erroneous the district court's finding that it was significant again in this wage claim that the EEOC produced no individual testimony of acts of wage discrimination. Neither did the court clearly err in finding important the Sears' management witness testimony that Sears did not discriminate regarding compensation in the period at issue. 157 We need not discuss the court's treatment of Sears' regression analyses, except to the extent that it identified the problems in the EEOC's analysis (for example, Sears' stepwise regressions demonstrated that inclusion of variables reduced disparities to the point that they were not statistically significant). The court also used Sears' evidence from its cohort analyses to conclude that EEOC's regression analyses did not accurately reflect Sears' complex, nondiscriminatory decision-making processes. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1352. In the cohort analyses, Sears compared the increases in salary among checklist male and female employees, with the result that women were treated as favorably or more so than men. The EEOC argues that these cohort analyses are invalid because results showed that men were given higher initial checklist salaries in 74% of the job-years analyzed, and disparities in starting checklist salaries were statistically significant in two of the five years when tested individually. Sears did a cohort analysis, however, that indexed salary for men and women in cohorts from 1973 through 1979 and set the index for women at a value that reflected the initial difference in pay estimated by Sears' multiple regression analysis. Men were indexed at 100, and women were indexed at 91 in 1974--by 1979, women were indexed at more than 97. The results again showed that women were just as favorably or more favorably treated than were men in salary increases. We do not find clearly erroneous the court's conclusion that the cohort analyses were the most complete evidence in this case regarding Sears' treatment of similarly situated checklist men and women. Id. Although the EEOC's argument is appealing at first glance, it assumes that sex is the only factor accounting for the differences in initial checklist pay between men and women. The mere fact that EEOC felt the need to do a multiple regression analysis, acknowledging that at least some variables other than sex affect salary, shows that the EEOC knows better than to claim that differences in initial checklist pay between men and women are solely due to sex. The EEOC does not challenge Sears' indexing of the initial salaries. 158 We conclude that the district court did not clearly err in determining that the EEOC's regression analyses were not probative of sex discrimination in wages of checklist employees at Sears.