May 26, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Increases in real earnings vary by occupation

Real median weekly earnings rose significantly in the service, sales, farming, and professional specialty occupations, but changed relatively little among the other major occupations in 1999.

[Chart data—TXT]

The service occupations attained the largest percent increase in weekly median earnings at 11.4 percent. Sales followed with an increase of 9.9 percent, then farming at 7.5 percent and professional specialty at 6.8 percent.

Among the other occupations, real weekly earnings of managers rose by 4.4 percent and earnings of administrative support personnel were up 2.6 percent. The remaining three occupations had increases of 1.4 percent or less.

These data are from the Current Population Survey program. To find out more, see "Earnings and employment trends in the 1990s," by Randy Ilg and Steven Haugen, Monthly Labor Review, March 2000.