WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Median weekly earnings of American full-time workers rose to 887 U.S. dollars in the third quarter, according to a report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Tuesday.

The report showed that the median weekly earnings of 117.2 million full-time wage and salary workers in the United States rose to 887 U.S. dollars in the third quarter of 2018.

The median is the value which separates the higher half from the lower half of a data sample. In this case, half of full-time workers made more than 887 U.S. dollars in the third quarter and the other half made less.

The median weekly earnings figure increased 3.3 percent than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 2.6 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period, said the bureau.

The statistics also showed that median weekly earnings of women rose from 767 to 796 U.S. dollars year-on-year, while this number for men rose from 937 to 973 U.S. dollars.

Among major race and ethnicity groups, Asians earned the highest median weekly earnings at 1,128 U.S. dollars, followed by whites at 915 U.S. dollars, Hispanics at 689 U.S. dollars and blacks at 686 U.S. dollars.

Another report from the Labor Department on Tuesday also showed that the number of job openings in the United States reached 7.1 million on the last business day of August, signaling a strong momentum in the U.S. labor market.