Here, find a United States income percentile by sex calculator for male income percentile and female income percentile in the United States in 2026 (income is earned in full year 2025).
You'll also find an average, median, and top 1% income breakdown by sex.
Income by sex: selected 2026 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 usually worked 30 or 40 hours (or more) a week for at least 40 weeks, or default to all workers.
What were the median and average individual incomes in 2026 for women and men?
In 2026, the median male earned $64,000 while the median female earned $50,000. The average male earned $94,855 while the average female made $68,124.
For men who worked 30 or more hours a week, median income was $75,002. The median female who worked 30+ hours made $60,041. Men who worked 30 or more hours weekly averaged $108,779 in earnings and women averaged $82,692.
Men who worked 40+ hours had median income of $78,000. Women who worked 40+ hours had a median income of $65,000. Respectively, the averages were $112,158 and $87,645.
What were the cutoffs for the top 10%, top 5%, and top 1% of male and female incomes?
In full-year 2025 (the ASEC asks for earnings in the year before; this survey was taken in 2026), the cutoffs for the top percentiles were as follows for all workers/any hours:
| Men | Women | |
| Top 10% | $187,550 | $135,360 |
| Top 5% | $262,900 | $185,000 |
| Top 1% | $600,000 | $360,012 |
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 from the 2026 ASEC.
| Men Samples | Men Workforce | Women Samples | Women in Workforce | |
| Any Hours | 36,654 | 95,127,126 | 34,135 | 87,715,882 |
| 30+ Hours Weekly | 29,337 | 75,575,043 | 24,187 | 62,314,695 |
| 40+ Hours Weekly | 27,164 | 69,879,966 | 20,238 | 52,305,145 |
The income gap between men and women in 2026
As you can see, when comparing medians or averages there is an unadjusted income gap between men and women. However, that isn't the entire story.
A full, adjusted measurement also includes weekly hours worked – an adjustment we made for the "full-time" categories – and other adjustments for types of jobs worked or career gaps. But, as you would see if you compiled those numbers, there is also a gap when you account for those measures.
Note the following: controlling for career choice, weekly hours worked, and gaps in work history reduces the income gap between men and women. Some models come close to eliminating it, but most economy-wide studies find adjustments shrink the gap rather than erase it.
Accounting for the confounding variables, studies find somewhere around a 1% to 15% unexplained gap between men's and women's earnings in the United States, depending on the data and model.
The numbers above are annual income, not hourly wages – the studies below adjust hourly wages, so the two gaps aren't the same measure.
For studies attempting to account for the gap, see Blau and Kahn (2017), the Department of Labor's 2019 gender pay disparity study, O'Neill and O'Neill (2005), and Goldin (2014).
Again, note that most studies find a real gender income gap even if you normalize known factors across men and women.
Source and methodology on 2026 income by sex
Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren, Daniel Backman, Etienne Breton, Grace Cooper, Julia A. Rivera Drew, Stephanie Richards, David Van Riper, and Kari C.W. Williams. IPUMS CPS: Version 13.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V13.0
Find my screen for "worker" in the income percentile for individual workers post. This post also layers on top weekly hours usually worked last year (with at least 40 weeks worked) – new for 2026, so the 30+ and 40+ numbers aren't directly comparable to earlier years.
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