Median Weekly Earnings by Quarter

Reading this table

Usual weekly earnings are what a wage and salary worker reports usually earning per week at the sole or principal job, before taxes and deductions, including overtime pay, commissions and tips usually received; the self-employed are excluded. The series comes from the Current Population Survey, a household survey of about 60,000 households, and covers full-time workers, meaning those who usually work 35 hours or more a week. The median is the point at which half of workers earn more and half less; it is computed by linear interpolation within $50 earnings intervals, so a small difference between two quarters is within the survey's rounding and sampling error.

Constant (1982-84) dollars deflate the medians by the CPI-U, so a rise in that column means earnings outpaced consumer prices. The number of workers is the full-time wage and salary workforce in thousands. Seasonally adjusted; the quarterly demographic detail (age, race, education, occupation) is published not seasonally adjusted and appears on the education and sex, race and ethnicity pages. BLS introduces new population controls each January, which can shift levels slightly between the fourth and first quarters.