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UNITED STATES
50 years of US wages, in
one chart
Apr 12, 2019
With the collaboration of
Statista
.
Wage worries? Image: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Felix Richter
Data Journalist, Statista
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its
March 2019 update on real wages in the United
States on Wednesday, reporting a -0.2 percent
drop in real average hourly earnings for
production and nonsupervisory employees
compared to February and a 1.6 percent
increase compared to March 2018. Denominated
in constant 1982-1984 dollars, average hourly
wages dropped from $9.40 in February to $9.38
in March, with average weekly earnings
amounting to $315.98.
Since it’s hard to grasp the value of $9.38 in 1982
from today’s point of view, we took the liberty of
calculating real wages in today’s prices and
taking a look at what wages from 1964 onwards
would be worth today. As the following chart
shows, today’s wages in the United States are at
a historically high level with average hourly
earnings in March 2019 amounting to $23.24 in
2019 dollars. Coincidentally that matches the
longtime peak of March 1974, when hourly wages
adjusted to 2019 dollars amounted to exactly
the same sum.
Image: Statista
Have you read?
Here's how the global financial crisis is
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work for all. Let’s start by fixing wage
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