Line
Wages vs. Prices
Average hourly earnings and consumer prices, change from a year earlier, %
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
Pay growth set against price growth. When the wage line sits above the price line, paychecks are buying more than a year earlier; below it, they are buying less.
What this chart reads
- Average hourly earnings · all privateas “Average hourly earnings”latest 2026-09-01
- Consumer Price Indexas “Consumer prices (CPI)”latest 2026-09-01
Sources
Average hourly earnings · all private. Source: The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes average hourly earnings monthly through the Current Employment Statistics survey. Palanor pulls the series from the FRED API nightly.
Consumer Price Index. Source: The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects prices monthly from roughly 4,000 housing units and 26,000 retail establishments across 87 urban areas. Palanor pulls the series from the FRED API nightly.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.