The earnings gap between women and men who work full time grew slightly in 2007, as men’s weekly pay incresed more than that of women, according to figures released recently by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Among the nation’s 106.1 million full-time wage and salary workers, median usual weekly earnings of women rose to $614 last year, up 2.3%, or $14, from the median of $600 in 2006, BLS said in a report posted on its Web site.  The median is the midpoint, meaning that half of the workers earned more than that amount while the other half earned less.

Men who worked full time saw their earnings climb even more, to a median of $766 per week in 2007, a gain of 3.1% or $23 from $743 the prior year.

As a result, the ratio of women’s earnings to those of men declined to 80.2% last year, down from 80.8% in 2006.

The ratio of women’s pay has trended upward since BLS began collecting the data in 1979, when women earned an average of 62.5% of men’s pay. The ratio first topped 80% in 2004, where it has remained, peaking at 81% in 2005.

The earnings data, compiled from the monthly current population survey of 60,000 households, show the amounts that wage and salary workers age 16 and older usually earn in a week, including any overtime, commissions, and tips.

Although inflation adjusted earnings of all workers with less than a high school diploma have fallen since 1979, the drop was significantly less for women than for men (9% vs. 28%).

Similarly, the earning growth for workers with college degrees has been higher for women than men (33% vs. 18%).

While men outnumber women in the full-time workforce (56% to 44%), women account for a larger share of part-time workers (68% to 32%), BLS reported. Nearly one-quarter of all working women usually worked part time in 2007, while only one-tenth of men did so, about the same proportions as 25 years ago.

Female part-time workers last year had higher median usual weekly earning than men ($218 vs. $203), in part because male part-time workers tend to be concentrated in the youngest age groups, which typically have low earnings.

Source: BNA Human Resources Report, 10/27/2008 Vol. 26, No. 42 pg 1161