Aggregate earnings are the sum of wage/salary and net self-employment income for a particular universe of people 16 years old and over. Aggregate earnings are subject to rounding, which means that all cells in a matrix are rounded to the nearest hundred dollars. (For more information, see "Aggregate" under "Derived Measures".)

The data on sex, which was asked of all people, were derived from answers to long-form questionnaire Item 3 and short-form questionnaire Item 5. Individuals were asked to mark either "male" or "female" to indicate their sex. For most cases in which sex was not reported, it was determined from the persons given (i.e., first) name and household relationship. Otherwise, sex was imputed according to the relationship to the householder and the age of the person. (For more information on imputation, see "Accuracy of the Data.")

'Full-time, year-round workers' consists of people 16 years old and over who usually worked 35 hours or more per week for 50 to 52 weeks in 1999. The term "worker" in these concepts refers to people classified as Worked in 1999 as defined above. The term worked in these concepts means "worked one or more weeks in 1999" as defined above under "Weeks Worked in 1999."

Earnings are defined as the sum of wage or salary income and net income from self-employment. "Earnings" represent the amount of income received regularly for people 16 years old and over before deductions for personal income taxes, social security, bond purchases, union dues, medicare deductions, etc.