April 09, 2004 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Increases in men's and women's earnings in 2003

Median weekly earnings for women rose 4.3 percent from 2002 to 2003, compared with a 2.4-percent increase for men. Over the same period, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased by 2.3 percent.

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All the major demographic groups saw earnings growth between 2002 and 2003, and earnings growth outpaced the rise in consumer prices for all groups except white men. Among women, blacks had the largest earnings growth, 3.8 percent, followed by whites, at 3.7 percent. Hispanic women experienced a slightly lower earnings growth of 3.3 percent. 

Black men’s earnings grew by 5.9 percent over the year, the largest increase in earnings among all the demographic groups. Hispanic men’s earnings grew by 2.9 percent, higher than the white men’s earnings growth of 1.9 percent.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. This article compares the median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. For more information on labor market trends in 2003, see "The U.S. labor market in 2003: signs of improvement by year’s end," by Rachel Krantz, Marisa Di Natale, and Thomas J. Krolik, Monthly Labor Review, March 2004.