Here is the Wall Street Journal today:
Wage growth accelerated, with average hourly earnings for private-sector workers climbing 0.34% on the month and up 2.9% over the past year. That was the strongest year-over-year gain since June 2009.
I am so tired of reading this kind of thing, especially in a newspaper aimed at the financial and business communities. The Journal is presenting nominal wage growth and calling it the “strongest” since 2009. But who cares? If inflation is running at 5 percent, that would be a wage decrease. If it’s running at 0 percent, that would be terrific growth. So what does real wage growth look like?
![](https://develop.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/blog_nominal_real_wage_growth_2010_2018.gif)
Adjusted for inflation—which is the only metric that matters to economists and workers alike—wages were up slightly more than 1 percent. The last time we saw growth that high was…16 months ago.
Real wage growth of 1 percent isn’t horrible. I happen to prefer looking at wages for nonsupervisory workers, which were up only about 0.6 percent, but that’s a matter of taste. What’s not a matter of taste is adjusting for inflation. Real wage growth in January was OK, but it was no record breaker.