Women took on slightly more than half of U.S. jobs created in the first part of the decade and made gains in securing the most lucrative openings.

Women posted a net increase of 1.7 million jobs paying above the median salary, while men gained a net increase of just over 220,000 of such positions, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report for the years 2000-2005.

Overall, men gained 1,804,000 jobs and women 1,996,000, or 52.5% of the total increase, for the period studied.

Women outpaced men in obtaining work that pays in the top quarter of all jobs, primarily positions in the health-care, financial and managerial fields, according to the report. At the end of 2005, 1.1 million more of those jobs were held by women, while 200,000 fewer men held such jobs as widespread layoffs cut manufacturing employment. But the wage gap persists: In 2005, the median weekly pay for women was $486, or 73% of that for men -- $663.

The BLS report by economist Randy Ilg found that from 2000 through 2005, service jobs accounted for the largest portion of the net 3.8 million increase in wage and salary positions. Most of the 2.3 million service positions were in food preparation and service, health-care support, and personal care and service, with four of five of those jobs paying below the 2005 overall median of $577 a week.

During the study period, 1.9 million above-the-median manufacturing jobs were lost, the bulk of which -- 1.4 million -- had been held by men. Meantime, the number of construction jobs grew by nearly one million. Though construction is often thought of as providing higher-earning jobs, the report showed construction work accounted for many of the new, lower-paying jobs filled by men.

Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said an increase in unskilled, immigrant labor might explain the downward trend in construction wages.

Many lower-end office jobs disappeared with new technology and employer belt-tightening, Mr. Bernstein said.

In trying to figure out whether the economy primarily has been adding low-paying jobs, many economists looked only at what industries provided job growth, and from that they estimated how good those jobs were based on the previous median pay within a specific industry, Mr. Ilg said. That approach, he said, could be problematic, explaining that "the amount of information you can glean from that [data] is limited because you are looking at one figure for an industry."