RESEARCH Checking in on Real Incomes after February Labor Market Data

For the past few years, household financial strength has underpinned a solid U.S. economic growth outlook. As we get further past the pandemic-era savings surge, consumption growth is increasingly aligning with real incomes. As shown in recent Institute Cash Pulse releases, cash outflows are closing in on inflows (slowing the decline in median balances), and smaller liquid buffers provide households with less wiggle room than any point since early 2020.

Varying perspectives on real income growth trends. With the outlook for demand ever more closely joined with pay—and questions 关于是什么导致了消费者信心的缺失，很多注意力都集中在收入购买力的变化上, i.e., real income growth. For such a fundamental economic concept, 人们对“收入与物价上涨保持同步”程度的看法存在令人惊讶的差异.” Maybe this is natural. After all, in the wake of the inflation peak in mid-2022, 由于去年同期与去年同期数据的差异，情况看起来更好，这引发了一场公众辩论. month-on-month jibs and jabs in the time series, of a single indicator (although, to be fair, comparisons of core vs. headline et cetera were also complicating factors). Real income growth requires two time series (twice as hard!).

With that precedent, 对于实际收入增长的表现有各种各样的看法，这也许并不奇怪. Shorter time horizons are easier: over the past year, mainstream indicators point towards real income gains. But after the COVID-19-driven volatility in the labor market, fiscal stimulus, 还有通货膨胀——相对于大流行时代动荡之前更为稳定的基准，很难确切地知道工人的处境. Let’s focus on some objective indicators to ground ideas. Two government data releases on wages (note: the price of labor, not labor income, which would be wage * quantity) are Average Hourly Earnings (AHE) and the Employment Cost Index for Wages and Salaries (ECI). 前者每月发布一次，并随着工作的构成而变化(2020年初AHE的峰值与低工资服务工作的裁员同时出现)。, 而后者是一个“更清晰”的衡量职业内部薪酬变化的指标，每季度发布一次. 下图显示了两个名义序列除以消费者价格指数并按比例缩放到2019年底的值后的结果. 

Figure 1: Two measures of real wage trends (FRED plot link) 

Oh dear … one series says we’re better off, the other says the opposite (comparing, as has become the norm, to a 2019 baseline). Confusing! Both series suggest that we’re below pre-pandemic trends, at least according to the eyeball and most reasonable picks for start/end points for extrapolation. ECI holds occupations constant, so there may be an upskilling story, i.e., perhaps the average worker has migrated up the value chain and is in a higher wage job, driving AHE higher but leaving the within-job ECI behind. We can’t tell directly without bringing in much more data, 但从早期研究所的分析(下文将讨论)中获得的个人视角提供了一个视角. 

Squaring with JPMC within-person measures. An Institute report from a few years ago shows a similar story in the pre-pandemic era: lower growth prior to 2015, and then a pick-up as the labor market tightened lasting through 2019. Notably, 以下两个关于收入动态的图表与通常的公开来源不同，它们以实得工资为中心，使用了广泛的收入衡量标准，包括失业保险和经济影响支付等政府项目的流入. 

图2:大流行前对收入增长的看法显示，低收入群体从劳动力市场紧缩中受益最大.

Our most recent Purchasing Power report 提供了一个关于“我们现在的情况”(或至少截至2023年8月)的视角，比较了个人的实得收入与2019年底的水平. Figure 3 shows that across income quartiles, folks have one-to-six percent higher real incomes than late 2019. 低收入者处于这个范围的高端——这一分配结果与 other recent research on this topic. 在大约四年的时间里，这是一个介于1和1之间的年化增长率差.5 percentage points, roughly in-line with the growth differentials seen just before 2020. Interestingly, however, that separation had occurred as of late 2021: by the end of that year, the direct impact of fiscal stimulus on incomes had faded, but individuals with lower incomes had sustained their relative gains. Effectively, our data show no net progress in extending that trend over the last two years of the series, despite the unemployment rate remaining near its lowest level in over fifty years. Notably, 我们数据中相对收入趋势的时间与亚特兰大联邦储备银行的工资增长追踪器不一致, which also provides a breakout by wage quartile. This is, in part, because those data use 12-month rolling averages of 12-month growth rates, due to sample size limitations in the underlying Current Population Survey Data. 

Figure 3: Tracking individuals over time shows modest real income gains over four years, which translate to minimal growth after taking out the effect of aging.

Are our figures for 2019 to 2023 comparable to the BLS metrics? Kind of, but only after transformation along the following lines. 我们在研究所的报告中使用的增长衡量标准是一个人内部的概念——当你关注实际家庭的经历时，这是很好的——但这意味着我们在跟踪一个正在变老的人口，我们看着他们走上职业阶梯. Academic research 这意味着，相对于整个劳动力市场的数据，对于40岁出头到45岁左右的人(接近我们的样本平均值)，这可能会使我们的增长指标每年上升1个百分点以上. With the center of our growth distribution about three-to-four percent from 2019 to 2023, real income gains have been slower than prior periods, 而且——取决于对生命周期增长的预期——可能与ECI给出的不那么乐观的信号相符，该信号约为2019年12月价值的99%.

While this isn’t a great outcome, wage gains netted across the past several Jobs Reports suggest growth exceeding inflation, despite the soft number for February, which may eventually make up for earlier inflation-adjusted losses.