How much (more) money we're making –August 2019
Bottom Line: In today's third story breaking down the employment report we'll look at the fun stuff...how much more money we're making. The average hourly wage for all Americans is currently $27.98. With an average work week of 34.3 hours, the average income is now $49,905. That’s $3 less than a month ago because hourly earnings rose but the average work week dropped slightly. So, the average person is working a little less but earning more money for the time they are working.
Here are the details:
- Earnings are up +8 cents per hour
- +3.2% year over year
- Average person is earning $2,362 more than a year ago
More great news within the job’s report. We’re still making more than 3% over a year ago. Anything above 3% year-over-year gives us the ability to continue to grow the economy by greater than 3%. In fact, income growth accelerated during the month. This is consistent with the tight jobs market. Employers are having to continue to raise wages to retain and attract employees. With consumer spending making up about 70% of the US economy – it's obvious why the economy has been strong and there’s enough here to see that there’s still room for optimism going forward.
It’s never the case that the headline unemployment rate and jobs added or lost will tell the whole story, but that’s especially true once again this month. If you stopped with the headline numbers from the jobs report you’d be left with an incomplete picture. By breaking it all down we see that we had a lot of news over the past month. Including...
- Only two months in American history with a lower real unemployment rate
- Record low Black unemployment rates for the 2nd straight month
- Most progress coming from those who were long-term unemployed, underemployed and marginally attached to the workforce.
- An acceleration of income growth
Good stuff. There are two sides to stories and one side to facts. I’ll continue to provide you with the facts and keep you ahead of the curve.