Here, find a United States income percentile by sex calculator for male income percentile and female income percentile in the United States in 2021. You'll also find an average, median, and top 1% income breakdown by sex.
Income by Sex: Selected 2021 Statistics
We divided results in this post to separate earnings for males and females. As this is a controversial data set, I've normalized earnings for hours worked with two of the filters – you can choose to only show people who worked 30 or 40 hours at a minimum per week. (Then you can visualize the gender wage gap for your choice of "full-time" workers.)
What was the median and average individual income in 2021 for women and men?
In 2021, the median male earned $51,121 while the median female earned $39,000. The average male earned $73,511.35 while the average female made $51,917.97.
For men who worked 30 or more house a week, median income was $59,810. The median female who worked 30+ hours made $47,000. Men who worked 30 or more hours weekly averaged $82,460.09 in earnings and women averaged $61,134.26.
Men who worked 40+ hours had median income of $60,011. Women who worked 40+ hours had a median income of $50,000. Respectively, the averages were $84,547.56 and $63,957.71.
What Were the Cutoffs for the Top 10%, Top 5%, and Top 1% of Male and Female Incomes?
In full-year 2020 – the most-recent full-year earnings for 2021 – the cutoffs for the top percentiles were as follows (for all workers):
| Sex | Male | Female |
| Top 10% | $151,425.00 | $103,005.00 |
| Top 5% | $206,691.00 | $142,051.00 |
| Top 1% | $428,500.00 | $263,601.00 |
This next table shows my estimate for the number of male and female workers in each "hours per week" category. It includes the number of data points used to come up with the numbers, sources from the 2021 ASEC.
| Men Samples | Men Workforce | Women Samples | Women Workforce | |
| All Hours | 44,011 | 91,263,623 | 40,956 | 83,194,554 |
| 30+ Hours a Week | 35,159 | 72,289,262 | 29,660 | 60,134,249 |
| 40+ Hours a Week | 32,858 | 67,397,712 | 25,269 | 51,350,858 |
How many men and women made $100,000 in 2021?
In 2021, somewhere around 19,504,449 men made $100,000 or more in income (about 23.4% of male workers). About 9,251,896 women made $100,000 or more, or 11.1% of the female working population.
How many men and women made $75,000 in 2021?
In 2021, roughly 29,037,859 men, or 31.8% of working males, made $75,000 or more. About 16,461,194 women made more than $75,000, or 19.8% of working women.
How many men and women made $50,000 in 2021?
In 2021, 47,287,943 men (roughly) made $50,000 or more, about 51.8% of all working men. Roughly 31,619,140 women cleared $50,000 in income, about 38.0% of working women.
The Income Gap Between Men and Women in 2021
As you can see, when comparing medians or averages there is a major unadjusted income gap between men and women. However, that isn't the full story. An appropriate measurement also includes weekly hours worked (an adjustment we made for the "full-time" categories) and other adjustments for types of jobs worked and things like career gaps.
Before coming to any conclusions, note the following: controlling for career choice, weekly hours worked, and gaps in work history reduces the income gap between men and women. No research finds that it fully eliminates the gap in earnings between men and women.
Accounting for the confounding variables, there is still a 3% to 8% unexplained gap between men's and women's earnings in the United States.
See here, here, and here for studies attempting to account for the gap.
Again, note there is a real gender income gap even if you normalize known factors across men and women.
Source and Methodology on 2021 Income by Sex
Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles and J. Robert Warren. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Curhttps:/Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren and Michael Westberry. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 9.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2021. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V9.0
Find my screen for "worker" in the income percentile for individual workers post. This post also layers on top the weekly hours worked variable.
Past editions:
