Aug. 22 is Black Womens Equal Pay Day. It marks the point when Black women s income finally caught up to earnings of white non-Hispanic men in the previous calendar year.

Despite efforts to raise awareness of the pay gap , this years Black Womens Equal Pay Day comes more than two weeks later than last years.

On average, Black women in America make 61 cents to every dollar a white man makes. Regardless of socioeconomic or education level, Black women work decades longer than white men to match their earnings, according to a study released this month by the National Womens Law Center .

The analysis shows Black women are losing out on $23,653 yearly. Over the course of a 40-year career, that totals $946,120.

In order to match the lifetime earnings of a 60-year-old white man, a Black woman would have to work until shes 86 years old, if they both started working at age 20. The gap is even greater for Black women born outside of the U.S., who make just half the earnings of foreign-born men in this country.

A nearly $1 million loss over a decades-long career is unfathomable, Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Womens Law Center, told HuffPost.

Its like losing out on the American dream, Tucker said. A million dollars is child care, its health care, its a house, its economic stability. And thats just straight earnings.

It doesnt stop there. The disparity widens depending on where you live. In Louisiana, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Texas, Utah and Virginia, lifetime wage losses equate to more than $1 million. Washington, D.C., has the worst U.S. income inequality for Black women, where they earn 51 cents to every dollar for white men and accrue a lifetime loss of $1.9 million, according to the study. Black women in D.C. would have to work until they are 98 to make up for those lost wages.