April 17, 2009 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Weekly earnings in first quarter 2009 by demographics

Women who usually worked full time had median earnings of $649 per week in the first quarter of 2009, or 78.9 percent of the $823 median for men.

Median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, not seasonally adjusted, first quarter 2009
[Chart data—TXT]

The female-to-male earnings ratios were higher among blacks (93.9 percent) and Hispanics (88.4 percent) than among whites (77.9 percent) or Asians (81.3 percent).

Median earnings for black men working at full-time jobs were $595 per week, 69.6 percent of the median for white men ($855). The difference was less among women, as black women's median earnings ($559) were 83.9 percent of those for their white counterparts ($666). Overall, median earnings of Hispanics who worked full time ($545) were lower than those of blacks ($577), whites ($758), and Asians ($869).

Overall, median weekly earnings of the nation's 100.4 million full-time wage and salary workers were $738 in the first quarter of 2009. This was 2.6 percent higher than a year earlier. The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was unchanged over the same period.

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 2009," (PDF) (HTML) news release USDL 09-0390.