Reconciling the divergence in aggregate U.S. wage series

Julien Champagne, André Kurmann and Jay Stewart

No 486, Economic Working Papers from Bureau of Labor Statistics

Abstract: According to data from the Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC) program, average hourly real compensation in the United States has grown consistently over time and become markedly more volatile since the mid-1980s. By contrast, data from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) imply that average hourly real earnings has mostly stagnated and become substantially less volatile. We show that differences in earnings concept and differences in worker coverage account for the majority of this divergence in growth and volatility. The results have important implications for the appropriate choice of aggregate wage series for macroeconomic analysis.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2016/pdf/ec160010.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Reconciling the divergence in aggregate U.S. wage series (2017)
Working Paper: Reconciling the Divergence in Aggregate U.S. Wage Series (2016)
Working Paper: Reconciling the divergence in aggregate U.S. wage series (2015)
Working Paper: Reconciling the divergence in aggregate U.S. wage series (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bls:wpaper:486

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Working Papers from Bureau of Labor Statistics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Cassidy-Gilbert ().