6 ms·
I'll need to look at the underlying data, but it seems that the job "classification/category" should be more important than the raw number. A boost in lower pai
by BaconPackets 3mo ago
I'll need to look at the underlying data, but it seems that the job "classification/category" should be more important than the raw number. A boost in lower paid/service industry jobs does not mean that there wasn't a loss in a category where AI can be more easily dropped into existing businesses.
Data : https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
- JumpCrisscross 3mo agoAverage weekly and hourly earnings were up in May [1], though “real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.5 percent from March to April, seasonally adjusted” [2]. Nominal wages being up rejects the hypothesis that folks are being downsized into lower-paying roles. [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
- markstos 3mo agoThe median would be interesting than the mean, as you can be hollowing out the middle, leaving more low-wage workers and a few very highly paid ones and the "average" still looks good.
- WillPostForFood 3mo agoMedian is also up: Median weekly earnings of the nation's 121.0 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,235 in the first quarter of 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was 3.4 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 2.7 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
- 5701652400 3mo agowonder how much of it is K-shaped. if is payouts for execs, capital gains and alike are boosting aggregate.
- munificent 3mo agoMedian specifically avoids outliers at both ends of the continuum like that.
- emp17344 3mo agoAlways an excuse, huh? Both mean and median wages are up. Sorry this doesn’t suit your narrative.
- cshores 3mo agoDude, inflation is eating away at any gains from the 3% yearly wage bump. Like in the last 5 years, the cost of goods and services has nearly doubled.
- nobodyandproud 3mo agoWhat is the employment rate between the two quarters? Edit: 4.2% (2025) vs 4.3% (2026). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/UNRATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/UNRATE
- throwaway27448 3mo agoIt's quite frustrating that they track average rather than median wages. As wealth inequality increases, average will be less and less representative of worker health.
- bwestergard 3mo agoThey do track median and 25th/75th percentiles.
- throwaway27448 3mo agoDo you have a link? There's no obvious place to look for this. All I can find is "Median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by sex, quarterly averages, seasonally adjusted". Which is not trivial to extrapolate into a real annual wage. And it's not clear how "quarterly averages" and "median usual weekly earnings" compose....
- wombatpm 3mo agoOld joke: Bill Gates walks into a bar. On average everyone there is a millionaire
- actionfromafar 3mo agoThat's a really old joke. :) Here's a new one. Musk goes to a concert. On average everyone there is a billionaire.
- hackboyfly 3mo agoGold
- alexsmirnov 3mo agoI more like my high school math teacher explanation: "Put your one hand on dry ice, another in the boiling water. On average, you feel warm and cozy"
- 3mo ago
- rich_sasha 3mo agoIn absolute terms AI is nibbling on a fairly small slice of the global pie of jobs - junior coders, lawyers, accountants, bankers. The average person earns an average salary doing something very different to the stuff we on HN stress about.
- 5701652400 3mo agokey point, those 6 figures SWEs earn, they would spend to "local non SWE" economy. your local datacenter does not care about local chickens or eggs, or private tutor, or pretty much anything at all. not even energy, it is has its own nucleaer reactor nearby. it is one-way economy from now on. you are only a consumer, not a producer. there is virtually nothing you (nor average joe) can provide that "datacenter" needs.
- zardo 3mo agoIt doesn't have a nuclear reactor, it has two dozen natural gas turbines.
- emp17344 3mo agoThis is - quite literally - the fixed-pie fallacy, which has been thoroughly debunked by now. Read up on basic economics before commenting on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
- heathrow83829 3mo agobe careful with "real" hourly earnings. if they're using the CPI then it can be very misleading. One need only compare nominal wages vs nominal rents per square foot for the last 50 years to see that actual wages have dropped by 30% and yet the "real" hourly average wage calculated via the CPI is flat, falsly implying that actual wages have not dropped.
- gruez 3mo ago> if they're using the CPI then it can be very misleading. One need only compare nominal wages vs nominal rents per square foot for the last 50 years to see that actual wages have dropped by 30% and yet the "real" hourly average wage calculated via the CPI is flat, falsly implying that actual wages have not dropped. Yes, if you get to pick prices of arbitrary items to compare against, it's easy to come to whatever conclusion you want[1]. That's why CPI uses a basket of goods, specifically to avoid cherry picking shenanigans. [1] https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/cpi2022junea-3.png https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/cpi2022junea-...
- heathrow83829 3mo agoshelter isn't just a cherry picked item. It's by an far the largest spending category, that and healthcare. I couldn't care less about all the other categories, personally.
- gruez 3mo ago>shelter isn't just a cherry picked item. It's by an far the largest spending category, that and healthcare. The BLS agrees. That's why "shelter" is weighted 35.6% in the CPI basket, by far the biggest item. > I couldn't care less about all the other categories, personally. If we're going by what people "care" about (whatever that means), the basket would probably be like 70% gas prices, 20% grocery prices, and 10% for everything else. Empirically speaking, those two are far more salient politically than housing.
- 3mo ago
- lesuorac 3mo agoIIUC, it's too early to taking "0.5%" as fact. Need to wait a few more months to see if any revisions occur.
- o_nate 3mo ago[dead]
- Ancapistani 3mo agoWhat would cause an increase in the number of open lower paid and/or service industry jobs while simultaneously reducing the number of openings in tech?
- 10xDev 3mo agoWorld Cup / Summer.
- gruez 3mo agotypically unemployment rates are seasonally adjusted.
- queenkjuul 3mo agoThat annual US world cup season?
- Ancapistani 3mo agoSeasonality needn't be regular, only predictable.
- themafia 3mo agoAI can't flip burgers?
- MoonWalk 3mo agoExactly. Without any specificity of job categories, this chart and conclusion are unsubstantiated garbage.