They’re all lower than they were in February … but deflated using CPI ex shelter (mimicking HICP), they’re down 1.4%.
Figure 1: Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers deflated by CPI – all urban (black), CPI wage earners and clerical workers (purple), chained CPI (light green), CPI ex-shelter (blue), AIER Everyday Price Index (red), all in 2025$. Source: BLS, AIER, ad author’s calculations.
That 1.4% on CPI ex-shelter is the number I keep coming back to. One wrinkle from where we sit – we run a job board for traveling skilled trades workers – is that average hourly earnings never sees a big chunk of what these folks actually take home. A traveling electrician or pipefitter is usually at $35-45 an hour plus $100-125 a day in per diem, and per diem is untaxed and does not land in the AHE series at all. Does not change your chart, but it does mean real pay for road work and the published real wage have been drifting apart for a couple of years. We built a calculator that folds untaxed per diem back into the hourly rate for exactly that reason.
What you’re suggesting is that some of the most in-demand workers are better compensated than average hourly wage data show. That’s certainly true, and it’s why we collect data on total compensation. However, I’m not sure that per diem travel payments amount to a net benefit to workers. Per diem payments are intended to make up for the cost of living away from home. Per diem costs are not so much extra take-home as the are a wedge between employers’ costs and workers’ net compensation. Hotels and restaurants are the beneficiaries.