A Unique Wage Environment

Tom Barkin

Speech from Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

Abstract: Given the historic job losses experienced during spring 2020, we might have expected wage growth to have slowed considerably during the pandemic. After all, nominal wage growth, as measured by the Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker,1 declined in the wake of the Great Recession, falling from 4.5 percent in December 2007 to 1.8 percent in October 2010, and remained sluggish for years. But it has been heartening to see that during the COVID-19 recession, the decline in wage growth has not mirrored the scale of job loss. COVID-19 brought only a muted and brief decline. In February 2020, overall wage growth was 4 percent. It hit its lowest point of the pandemic, 3.6 percent, by the end of the year. Wage growth in early 2021 has stayed near that level, fluctuating between 3.6 percent and 3.7 percent.

Keywords: employment; and; labor; markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06-02
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