Following her exit from MSNBC earlier this year, Joy Reid is speaking out about being paid significantly less than peers who had “lower ratings.”
The famed political commentator got candid while delivering a keynote at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival’s C-Suite Soirée on Aug. 7. Reflecting on her February firing from MSNBC, Reid revealed the pay disparities she experienced across her 10 years and three shows at the network.
“I worked in a business where I was paid a tenth of the salary of people who did literally my same job, the whole time I worked there,” she said, as captured by People. “Any man that was doing what I was doing was going to make more than me. And that they were going to be able to negotiate higher salaries, even at lower ratings.”
Doing more while being paid less is a reality many women, particularly women of color, still face at work. Though the gender pay gap has narrowed somewhat over the past two decades, research shows women continue to earn about 84 cents for every dollar men make.
Reid says she experienced that disparity firsthand during her MSNBC tenure from 2014 until her February removal, which she credits to her coverage of Donald Trump and the Israel-Hamas war.
Even with a show that consistently drove high engagement on social media, Reid says her success wasn’t enough to earn pay equal to her male colleagues, an imbalance she refers to as “the curse of competency.”“The curse of competency means you’re the best person at what you do,” Reid told Full Circle Strategies Founder Jotaka Eaddy while recalling a private conversation she’d had with her best friend about workplace issues. “You know more than everyone else because you’ve had to do more work and more research to get where you are, and so therefore you’re the one everybody calls.”
“Which means,” she continued, “that because you are the best at it, you actually work the hardest, do the most hours, work the most overtime, and don’t get paid commensurate to the amount of work you do.”
Reid didn’t hold back, noting that her white male colleagues are often praised as “geniuses” for doing what she considers the bare minimum.
“They get the sort of presumption of brilliance. The Elon Musk presumption, where people are like, ‘You look like a genius, you must be a genius.’ But they’re not,” she quipped. “They work less hours and make more than us, get bigger raises, more opportunities and more grace. This is the world we live in.”
Reid was reportedly earning $3 million annually as host of The ReidOut. But in late 2024, she and several other anchors were hit with pay cuts as part of MSNBC’s cost-saving measures. In February, new network President Rebecca Kulter announced Reid’s departure in a staff memo. Reid currently hosts her daily Joy Reid Show on YouTube.RELATED CONTENT: Rest In Power: Alexis Herman, First Black Labor Secretary, Dies At 76