In our latest Workers by the Numbers blogcast with Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute and Alicia Modestino of Northeastern University and the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, the panel was unanimous that the Bureau of Labor Statistics' June jobs, unemployment, and wages report was "good for workers." Today, workers received more good news about their families' economic situations: their inflation-adjusted wages are continuing to rise.
BLS announced that the Consumer Price Index --- one trusted measure of inflation --- had declined to 3% on an annual basis, which is its lowest level since March 2021. So, price increases are slowing, but that's not the entire picture. BLS also announced that real (that is, discounting for inflation) average hourly earnings had increased 1.2% since June 2022. So, workers' wages are continuing to rise. Real average weekly earnings grew at a slower rate of 0.6%, but that's because the number of hours that workers are working is lower now than last year, on average. Although the following chart showing most of the relevant data appears complicated, the overall story for workers is quite simple: workers' wages are providing them with more purchasing power as their wage increases remain strong and inflation substantially slows.
Workers' earnings have been rising steadily because workers have a great deal of individual bargaining power in this economy, as our panelists explained in the last blogcast. Unemployment has been holding steady between 3.4% and 3.7%, a historically very low level, since March 2022. The number of job openings so far exceeds the number of available workers that millions of workers are able to quit their jobs each month with abundant confidence that they will be able find new jobs fairly easily. And while the number of layoffs and discharges has increased in 2023 when compared with the last two years, they are still at a reasonably low level. Certainly, we have not seen the spike in unemployment and layoffs that some doomsaying pundits keep predicting.
Worker power remains strong. And that's paying off in workers' paychecks and their job opportunities.
