April 27, 2006 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Weekly earnings in first quarter 2006 by demographics

Median weekly earnings of the nation’s full-time wage and salary workers were $668 in the first quarter of 2006, 2.3 percent higher than a year earlier.

[Chart data—TXT]

This compares with a gain of 3.6 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period.

Women who usually worked full time had median earnings of $600 per week, or 80.6 percent of the $744 median for men. The female-to-male earnings ratios were higher among blacks (93.9 percent) and Hispanics or Latinos (86.6 percent) than among whites (79.6 percent) or Asians (71.1 percent).

Median earnings for black men working at full-time jobs were $577 per week, 75.6 percent of the median for white men ($763). The difference was less among women, as black women’s median earnings ($542) were 89.3 percent of those for their white counterparts ($607). Overall, median earnings of Hispanic or Latinos who worked full time ($487) were lower than those of blacks ($560), whites ($688), and Asians ($766).

These data on earnings are produced by the Current Population Survey. For more information, see "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: First Quarter 2006" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 06-696.