The median pay of U.S. workers has stagnated in recent years, but that is not true for all workers. When adjusted for inflation, the wages of low-paid workers have declined. But the wages for better-paid workers have grown significantly more rapidly than inflation.

The Labor Department last week reported the levels of “usual weekly wages” reported by Americans questioned in the household survey that determines the unemployment rate. The figures are released quarterly, available since 2000.

Those figures are different from total income, in that they ignore investment income as well as bonuses or overtime. The national median wage in the first quarter of this year was $827 a week. In 2013 dollars, the median wage 13 years before was $819, so the increase is about 1 percent. The figures include all workers older than 25.

The department said that to reach the 90th percentile — that is, to earn more money than 90 percent of those with jobs — a person needed to earn $1,909 a week. That figure was nearly 9 percent higher than in early 1980.

To reach the 10th percentile — earning less money than 90 percent of those with jobs — required an income of $387 a week. After adjusting for inflation, that figure is down 3 percent from 2000.

Put another way, in 2000 a worker in the 75th percentile made 48 percent more than a worker at the median, or 50th percentile. Now, a worker in that group earns 58 percent more.