April 05, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Median weekly earnings in 2001

Full-time workers with less than a high school diploma had a nominal earnings gain of 5 percent in 2001, the largest percentage gain of the four main educational categories. Their median usual weekly earnings rose from $360 to $378 between 2000 and 2001.

[Chart data—TXT]

Earnings for persons with some college or an associate degree increased by 3.8 percent in 2001, rising from $598 to $621. College graduates had earnings increases of 3.1 percent; their earnings rose from $896 per week in 2000 to $924 per week in 2001.

The earnings increase among high school graduates with no college education was the lowest of the educational groups at 2.8 percent, which was just enough to keep pace with inflation—the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) also rose 2.8 percent in 2001.

These data are a product of the Current Population Survey. The above figures are for full-time wage and salary workers. Note that earnings figures by educational attainment refer to persons age 25 and older. Find out more about earnings in 2001 in "U.S. labor market in 2001: economy enters a recession," by David S. Langdon, Terence M. McMenamin, and Thomas J. Krolik, Monthly Labor Review, February 2002.