Median usual weekly earnings, by race, ethnicity, and education, second quarter, 2011

Median weekly earnings of the nation's 100.6 million full-time wage and salary workers were $753 in the second quarter of 2011. Median weekly earnings of Hispanics who worked full time ($565) were lower than the median weekly earnings of blacks ($623), whites ($770), and Asians ($872).

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By educational attainment, full-time workers age 25 and over without a high school diploma had median weekly earnings of $458, compared with $643 for high school graduates (no college) and $1,043 for those holding a bachelor's degree.

Half of all workers age 25 and over without a high school diploma (those with earnings between the first and third quartiles) had weekly earnings between $348 and $637. The highest earning 25 percent of workers with bachelor's degrees (those with earnings above the third quartile) earned $1,548 or more per week.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: Second Quarter 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-1082. Note: 25 percent of all full-time wage and salary workers earn less than the upper limit of the first quartile; 50 percent earn less than the upper limit of the second quartile (or median); 75 percent earn less than the upper limit of the third quartile. Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.