Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers News Release — 2011-01-20

Median weekly earnings of the nation's 100.1 million full-time wage and salary workers were $752 in the fourth quarter of 2010 (not seasonally adjusted), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was 0.5 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 1.3 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period. Data on usual weekly earnings are collected as part of the Current Population Survey, a nationwide sample survey of households in which respondents are asked, among other things, how much each wage and salary worker usually earns. (See the Technical Note.) Data shown in this release are not seasonally adjusted unless otherwise specified. Highlights from fourth-quarter data are: --Seasonally adjusted median weekly earnings were $751 in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 0.8 percent from the previous quarter, $745.