Inflation exceeds average hourly earnings in general (private sector) and leisure and hospitality services (produced and non-regulated). But they are still ahead of 2020M02 levels.
figure 1: Average hourly earnings for private off-farm payroll (blue, left log scale) and leisure and hospitality services (brown, right log scale), both at $2020/hour. 2022M04 real wages use Cleveland Fed CPI nowcast (5/6). Source: BLS via FRED, Cleveland Fedand the authors’ calculations.
Note that the Cleveland Fed’s immediate CPI forecast for April is 0.28% m/m, compared to the Bloomberg consensus of 0.2%. Real average hourly earnings could fall again if Wednesday’s figure exceeds 0.28%.
While both real wage series are higher than pre-M03 in 2020 (not keeping composition the same), it is interesting that leisure and hospitality revenue is higher than the 2016-19 trend.
figure 2: Average hourly earnings (brown) and 2016-19 random trend (light blue) for leisure and hospitality services, both at $2020/hour. 2022M04 real wages using Cleveland Fed CPI nowcast (5/6). Source: BLS via FRED, Cleveland Fedand the authors’ calculations.
