Chart: Weekly earnings in first quarter 2010 by demographics

Women who usually worked full time had median earnings of $665 per week in the first quarter of 2010, or 78.8 percent of the $844 median for men. This is according to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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The female-to-male earnings ratios were higher among blacks (92.0 percent) and Hispanics (85.6 percent) than among whites (78.0 percent) or Asians (81.6 percent).

Median earnings for black men working at full-time jobs were $635 per week, 73.1 percent of the median for white men ($869). The difference was less among women, as black women's median earnings ($584) were 86.1 percent of those for white women ($678). Overall, median earnings of Hispanics who worked full time ($554) were lower than those of blacks ($610), whites ($772), and Asians ($859).

Overall, median weekly earnings of the nation's 96.8 million full-time wage and salary workers were $754 in the first quarter of 2010. This was 2.2 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 2.4 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period.

This data on earnings is produced by the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: First Quarter 2010" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL 10-0468.