TED: The Editor's Desk

October 19, 2009 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Change in real weekly earnings, September 2009

Real average weekly earnings fell 0.4 percent from August to September, after seasonal adjustment.

Composition of change in real earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls, September 2009
[Chart data]

The decline stemmed from a decrease in average weekly hours of -0.3 percent, and an increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) of 0.2 percent, outpacing the increase in average hourly earnings of 0.1 percent.

Since reaching a high point in December 2008, real average weekly earnings have fallen by 1.9 percent.

These earnings data are from the Current Employment Statistics Program. These data are for production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls. Earnings data are preliminary and subject to revision. Find out more in "Real Earnings—September 2009" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL 09-1240.

Of interest

Spotlight on Statistics: The Recession of 2007–2009

The most recent recession in the United States began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, though many of the statistics that describe the U.S. economy have yet to return to their pre-recession values. In this Spotlight, we present BLS data that compare the recent recession to previous recessions. Read more »