Tag Archives: Real Wages

Real wages unchanged, real aggregate payrolls rose slightly in April Consumer inflation for April was +0.3%, the lowest monthly advance since last August. The number was helped by a big decline in energy prices, down -2.7% for the month, and also by used cars, down -0.4% for the month. In this post I’ll report on the impact on wages. I’ll put up a separate post with more general comments later. Since nominal nonsupervisory wages rose 0.4% in...

March consumer inflation part 1: real wages decline sharply The March consumer inflation report was particularly important, and particularly bad. So much so that I am going to divide my comments into two separate posts. First, the news on real wages was terrible. While nominally nonsupervisory wages rose 0.4% in March, since inflation rose 1.2%, “real” wages declined -0.8% in March alone. On a YoY basis, real wages were down -1.8%:...

Real wages continued to stall in January, portending a consumer slowdown, but don’t reverse Let me follow up on yesterday’s post about the January CPI by talking about “real” wages. Since both average real hourly wages and consumer inflation increased in January by 0.6%, real hourly wages for non-supervisory workers were flat month over month: Real wages have been essentially flat since June 2020, with the exception of last winter and...

Consumer inflation lessens in December; real wages increase, but a consumer slowdown remains likely Consumer prices increased 0.5% in December, a deceleration from the past several months. But this is still well above the typical monthly increase in prices pre-pandemic:  On a YoY basis, at 7.1% consumer inflation is the highest since the big Reagan recession of 1981-82. My favorite measure, CPI ex energy, is also up 5.6% YoY, and tied for...

Real wages decrease sharply – at least, if you include used vehicle prices As I pointed out yesterday, the big increase in inflation over the past few months has made the YoY change in real wages for nonsupervisory workers negative. Let’s take a little closer look. Here is a graph of wages for nonsupervisory workers taking overall inflation into account, normed to 100 as of January 1973 (its peak previous to the pandemic): Wages had...

Monthly consumer inflation rate increases by most in 10 years; real wages decline, but real aggregate wages increase  – by New Deal democratSeasonally adjusted consumer prices rose 0.6% in March. This was the biggest single month gain since June 2009, coming out of the Great Recession: Leaving aside the pandemic, since the 1980s recessions have only happened when CPI less energy costs (red) had risen to close to or over 3%/year, usually...

To the Marxists everywhere, my simple challenge: Is your view that Marx’s theory of wage determination in volume 1 of Capital that real wages in capitalism can and will rise above the value of the maintenance and reproduction of labour, and in the long run will keep rising, vastly improving the living standards of workers? If you say “yes,” then my refutation here of Marx’s view of a rising rate of exploitation in capitalism (from increasing surplus value extracted from workers) is...

A short op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, suggests that David Card's famous work (subscription required) on the effects of Cuban immigrants on real wages in Miami was probably correct, meaning immigration does NOT depress wages or lead to higher unemployment. Peri and Yasenov's actual paper is available here (subscription is also required, I'm afraid).I do have problems with the mainstream interpretation that real wages and employment are determined in the labor market for...