July 20, 2007 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Weekly earnings in second quarter 2007 by demographics

Median weekly earnings of the nation’s 106.9 million full-time wage and salary workers were $690 in the second quarter of 2007. This was 4.7 percent higher than a year earlier compared with a gain of 2.7 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period.

[Chart data—TXT]

Women who usually worked full time had median earnings of $607 per week, or 79.6 percent of the $763 median for men. The female-to-male earnings ratios were higher among Hispanics or Latinos (89.9 percent) and blacks (87.3 percent) than among whites (79.2 percent) or Asians (75.3 percent).

Median earnings for black men working at full-time jobs were $597 per week, 76.2 percent of the median for white men ($783). The difference was less among women, as black women's median earnings ($521) were 84.0 percent of those for their white counterparts ($620). Overall, median earnings of Hispanics or Latinos who worked full time ($503) were lower than those of blacks ($562), whites ($713), and Asians ($827).

These data on earnings are produced by the Current Population Survey. For more information, see "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: Second Quarter 2007" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 07-1096.