The real wages of American workers fell last month as the United States appears to have entered a recession, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While the report found that real average hourly earnings increased 0.3 percent from April to May, real “average weekly earnings decreased 0.1 percent over the month due to the change in real average hourly earnings combined with a 0.3-percent decrease in the average workweek.”
Additionally, real “average hourly earnings increased 0.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, from May 2022 to May 2023. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.9 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 0.7-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period,” the report said.
The news comes after a separate report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) found that the U.S. economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.5% in the first quarter of 2023, which is the fourth quarter out of the last five with negative growth.
According to Jason Furman, who served as former President Barack Obama’s Chairman of Economic Advisers, the report indicates that the economy has been in a recession “for some time.”
If I truly believed the average of GDP + GDI (and I mostly do believe it) then one could reasonably describe the economy as having been in recession for some time, but a very very strange recession with strong employment gains and low unemployment–so a productivity decline.
— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) May 25, 2023