Real Wage Gains…Nice While They Lasted (And They Didn’t Last Long)
With today’s release of the inflation report for May, we can have a look at what’s going on with real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) hourly and weekly earnings for most workers. It ain’t pretty.
As shown in the Figure (after the break), hourly and weekly wages for the 80% of the workforce holding non-managerial jobs are trending down pretty sharply this year. Thanks to a few months of very mild inflation readings last fall, wages grew steeply, but only for two months. Most recently, inflation has been outpacing wage growth on a monthly basis, though given the very strong real growth in the fall, wages remain above their levels of one year ago.
