August 16, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Women's earnings growth higher than men's at all education levels, 1979-2000
At all levels of education, women fared better than men with respect to
earnings growth between 1979 and 2000.
![Percent change between 1979 and 2000 in median usual weekly earnings in constant (2000) dollars by educational attainment and sex](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120921215838im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2001/Aug/wk2/art04.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
Although both women and men without a high school diploma have experienced a decline in
inflation-adjusted earnings since 1979, women's earnings fell significantly
less—a drop of 9.8 percent, compared with a
26.7-percent drop for men.
Inflation-adjusted earnings for women with a high school diploma advanced 2.9 percent between 1979 and 2000, while earnings for male high school graduates fell 12.9 percent. Among those with some college or an associate degree, women's earnings were up 8.2 percent, while men's were down 4.1 percent.
Earnings for women with college degrees have increased by 30.4 percent since 1979 on an inflation-adjusted basis, while those of male college graduates rose by only 16.7 percent.
These data on earnings are produced by the Current
Population Survey. Earnings data in this article are median usual
weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers in constant (2000)
dollars. More information can be found in "Highlights of Women’s
Earnings in 2000," BLS Report 952 (PDF
193K).
Of interest
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