Median weekly earnings were $849 in the fourth quarter of 2016

Median weekly earnings of the nation’s 111.3 million full-time wage and salary workers were $849 in the fourth quarter of 2016. Women had median weekly earnings of $758, or 81.8 percent of the $927 median for men.

The women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio varied by race and ethnicity in the fourth quarter of 2016. Black women earned 92.1 percent as much as their male counterparts, compared with Hispanic women (86.9 percent), White women (81.1 percent), and Asian women (79.2 percent).

Among the major race and ethnicity groups, median weekly earnings for Black men working at full-time jobs were $706, or 73.6 percent of the median for White men ($959). The difference was less among women, as Black women’s median earnings ($650) were 83.5 percent of those for White women ($778). Overall, median earnings of Hispanics who worked full time ($646) were lower than those of Blacks ($675), Whites ($881), and Asians ($1,022).

These data are from the Current Population Survey and are not seasonally adjusted. The median is the midpoint in a given earnings distribution, with half of workers having earnings above the median and the other half having earnings below the median. People whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. To learn more, see “Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: Fourth Quarter 2016” (HTML) (PDF).