WEEKLY EARNINGS OF WAGE AND SALARY WORKERS

Median weekly earnings of the nation's 100.1 million full-time wage and salary
workers were $738 in the third quarter of 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics reported today. This was 2.5 percent higher than a year earlier. The
Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) fell by 1.6 percent over
the same period.


Data on usual weekly earnings are collected as part of the Current Population
Survey, a nationwide sample survey of households in which respondents are
asked, among other things, how much each wage and salary worker usually earns.
(See the Technical Note.) Highlights from the third-quarter data are:

--Women who usually worked full time had median earnings of $657 per week,
or 80.9 percent of the $812 median for men. The female-to-male earnings
ratios were higher among blacks (95.3 percent) and Hispanics (95.2 per-
cent) than among whites (80.0 percent) or Asians (82.6 percent). (See
table 1.)

--Median earnings for black men working at full-time jobs were $622 per
week, 74.5 percent of the $835 median for white men. The difference
was smaller among women, as black women's median earnings ($593) were
88.8 percent of those for white women ($668). Overall, median earnings
of Hispanics who worked full time ($527) were lower than those of
blacks ($607), whites ($753), and Asians ($877). (See table 1.)

--Among men, those age 45 to 54 and age 55 to 64 had the highest median
weekly earnings, $944 and $979, respectively. Among women, weekly
earnings were highest for those age 35 to 44 and age 45 to 54, $720
and $727, respectively. (See table 2.)

--Among the major occupational groups, persons employed full time in
management, professional, and related occupations had the highest
median weekly earnings--$1,259 for men and $913 for women. Persons
in service jobs earned the least. (See table 3.)

--Full-time workers age 25 and over without a high school diploma had
median weekly earnings of $448, compared with $621 for high school
graduates (no college) and $1,145 for those holding at least a bach-
elor's degree. Among college graduates with advanced degrees (pro-
fessional or master's degree and above), the highest earning 10 per-
cent of male workers made $3,260 or more per week, compared with
$2,252 or more for their female counterparts.