Educational attainment and median earnings
July 21, 2004
The median weekly earnings of the nation's 101.3 million full-time wage and salary workers were $639 in the second quarter of 2004. This was 3.7 percent higher than a year earlier, and is compared with a 2.8 percent gain in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period.
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Full-time workers age 25 and over without a high school diploma had median weekly earnings of $404 in the second quarter of 2004, compared with $576 for high school graduates (no college) and $973 for college graduates holding at least a bachelor's degree.
Persons with some college or an associate’s degree earned $664 at the median, while workers holding advanced degrees earned $1,142.
Data on weekly earnings are from the Current Population Survey. Figures in this article are not seasonally adjusted. Find more information on earnings in "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: Second Quarter 2004" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 04-1328.
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United States Department of Labor
