Accounting for the Growth of Real Wages of U.S. Manufacturing Production Workers since the Nineteenth Century

John H. Pencavel ()
Additional contact information
John H. Pencavel: Stanford University

No 17326, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Why have the real (consumption) wages of U.S. workers risen since the nineteenth century? Some economists answer that increases in real wages have followed increases in labor productivity over time. In this paper, this hypothesized association is confronted with annual observations of changes in the wages and changes in the labor productivity of U.S. manufacturing production workers from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. Correlates with changes in real wages in addition to productivity are considered including statutory legislation, trade unionism, and the state of the business cycle.

Keywords: real wages; labor productivity; trade unions; legislation; monopsony (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 N31 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-his, nep-inv and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17326.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:iza:izadps:dp17326

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().