Chart: Earnings, men vs. women, and by age

Women who usually worked full time had median weekly earnings of $662, or 81.4 percent of the $813 median for men, in the third quarter of 2010.

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Usual weekly earnings of full-time workers varied by age. Among men, those age 45 to 54 and age 55 to 64 had the highest median weekly earnings, $941 and $983, respectively.

Usual weekly earnings were highest for women from age 35 to 64; median weekly earnings were $729 for women age 35 to 44 and age 45 to 54, essentially the same as the $739 median for women age 55 to 64.

Median weekly earnings of the nation's 101.4 million full-time wage and salary workers were $740 in the third quarter of 2010, not seasonally adjusted. This was 0.3-percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 1.2 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period.

This data on earnings is from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: Third Quarter 2010" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-10-1450.