Income Percentile by Sex: Average, Median, Top 1% Income and a Calculator

Written by:
PK

Here, find a United States income percentile by sex calculator for male income percentile and female income percentile in the United States in 2023 (income is earned in full year 2022, and the survey was taken in 2023). You'll also find an average, median, and top 1% income breakdown by sex.

Income by Sex: Selected 2023 Statistics

We divided results in this post to separate earnings for males and females. I've normalized earnings for hours worked with two of the filters – you can choose to only show men and women 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 2023 for women and men?

In 2023, the median male earned $56,302 while the median female earned $43,050 The average male earned $78,787.41 while the average female made $58,147.49.

For men who worked 30 or more hours a week, median income was $61,010. The median female who worked 30+ hours made $50,033. Men who worked 30 or more hours weekly averaged $86,361.11 in earnings and women averaged $67,262.08.

Men who worked 40+ hours had median income of $64,100. Women who worked 40+ hours had a median income of $52,854. Respectively, the averages were $88,610.18 and $70,928.77.

What Were the Cutoffs for the Top 10%, Top 5%, and Top 1% of Male and Female Incomes?

In full-year 2022, the cutoffs for the top percentiles were as follows (for all workers, I'm not using any hour screen):

SexMaleFemale
Top 10%$159,324$113,701
Top 5%$219,101$151,583
Top 1%$500,020$317,095

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 2023 ASEC.

Men SamplesMen WorkforceWomen SamplesWomen Workforce
All Hours39,51294,086,84236,70284,366,027
30+ Hours a Week32,76677,772,34727,79563,806,527
40+ Hours a Week30,58872,268,10323,65654,362,781

The Income Gap Between Men and Women in 2023

As you can see, when comparing medians or averages there is a significant unadjusted income gap between men and women – but 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. But as you can quickly see, there is also a gap in those measures.

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 2023 Income by Sex

Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren, Daniel Backman, Annie Chen, Grace Cooper, Stephanie Richards, Megan Schouweiler, and Michael Westberry. IPUMS CPS: Version 11.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2023. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V11.0

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:

      

PK

PK started DQYDJ in 2009 to research and discuss finance and investing and help answer financial questions. He's expanded DQYDJ to build visualizations, calculators, and interactive tools.

PK lives in New Hampshire with his wife, kids, and dog.

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