How much money we're making – August 2020
Bottom Line: In today's third story breaking down the employment report we'll look at what ordinarily is the fun stuff...how much more money we're making. The news was good in July. The average hourly wage for all Americans is currently $29.39. With an average work week of 34.5 hours, the average income is now $52,725. That’s $36 dollars more than a month ago and exciting as we continue to add jobs. For those who have work, wages are generally rising as opposed to a collapsing of incomes. In other words, employers are generally bringing back employees at the same level of income or better, to what they were earning when the lockdowns hit. That’s terrific news for all of the obvious reasons.
For those who have work right now, they’re generally doing about as well as ever.
Here are the details:
- Hourly earnings up 7 cents per hour
- Average earnings +5.7% year over year
- Average person in the workforce is earning $2,820 more than a year ago
This is very much a case of the haves and the have nots. In this case, if you’re employed, the news is generally very positive. The average person in the workforce who is employed, and was a year ago, is earning greater than 5% more – that's extremely strong. It also points to another encouraging trend. Despite isolated cases, companies, industries – which have pushed pay decreases through for those who’ve remained employed...most haven’t. Additionally, we’re seeing furloughed employees come back to work at the same rate of pay as before the pandemic. This is an encouraging indicator that most businesses believe the economic harm of the virus will be temporary and they want to retain their employees – rather than risk losing them to other companies through pay decreases. If this holds and we can continue to make progress in future months, there’s reason for optimism as we head down the home stretch of 2020.