I want to RE-register my ongoing complaint that we have NO DATA on real wages becase BLS does not collect _nominal_ wage data. For all I know the remuneration unit value indexes BLS _does_ publish may not be far off. But we do not know.
Sure - as long as the measure is consistent, we should be capturing the correct trend. So real wages grew most likely, but post tax/transfer incomes fell. That's the key contrast I see in the data.
Probably most of the time it's not bad, but a) why cant we just do it right? and b) big changes (COVID) really mess it up becasue the composition within the categories change.
I want to RE-register my ongoing complaint that we have NO DATA on real wages becase BLS does not collect _nominal_ wage data. For all I know the remuneration unit value indexes BLS _does_ publish may not be far off. But we do not know.
Sure - as long as the measure is consistent, we should be capturing the correct trend. So real wages grew most likely, but post tax/transfer incomes fell. That's the key contrast I see in the data.
Probably most of the time it's not bad, but a) why cant we just do it right? and b) big changes (COVID) really mess it up becasue the composition within the categories change.
Great article!
Thank you!
On # 3 Real wages (at least if averaged over the higher unemployment) will be even lower if the Fed does NOT respond to tariffs with higher inflation.
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/tariffs-and-inflation
The Summer's idea of an "interest rate adjusted" inflation measure deserves investigation.