How should we assess and characterize worker wage growth in recent decades?
Key takeaways:
- Real median wages grew too slowly and only in fits and starts over the last 45 years. This pattern was even starker for low-wage workers.
- Median wages grew only one-third as fast as economy-wide productivity growth.
- Wage growth was reasonably healthy during tight labor markets but almost zero in other years.
- While tight labor markets persisted only in the clear minority of years since 1979, the last decade has been largely characterized by persistent low unemployment and this has been good for wage growth.
- Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s chaotic and harmful policy agenda threatens these recent gains.
Our recently released State of Working America wages report includes new data on wages through 2024. Cumulative median wage growth was just 29% since 1979—or less than 0.6% per year on average.
This was far slower than the economy’s potential to deliver wage growth for all workers. In fact, as Figure A shows, median wage growth was only one-third as fast as how much could have been delivered to all workers by growing productivity. This disconnect between pay and productivity is why we now refer to the post-1979 trajectory of wages as “wage suppression” rather than “wage stagnation.”
Median wage growth greater than zero, but still lags potential growth since 1979: Cumulative growth rate of real median wages and productivity
| Median wage | Productivity | |
|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 1980 | -0.8% | -2.5% |
| 1981 | -1.8% | -0.9% |
| 1982 | -1.9% | -1.9% |
| 1983 | -2.3% | 1.2% |
| 1984 | -1.4% | 3.6% |
| 1985 | -0.5% | 5.3% |
| 1986 | 1.4% | 7.7% |
| 1987 | 1.4% | 7.3% |
| 1988 | 1.0% | 8.7% |
| 1989 | 0.3% | 9.4% |
| 1990 | -0.2% | 9.8% |
| 1991 | 0.0% | 10.6% |
| 1992 | 0.2% | 14.8% |
| 1993 | 0.8% | 15.3% |
| 1994 | -0.4% | 16.3% |
| 1995 | -0.8% | 16.4% |
| 1996 | -1.3% | 17.9% |
| 1997 | -0.2% | 19.7% |
| 1998 | 3.7% | 22.1% |
| 1999 | 6.2% | 24.8% |
| 2000 | 6.6% | 26.4% |
| 2001 | 8.9% | 28.5% |
| 2002 | 10.7% | 32.7% |
| 2003 | 11.7% | 37.3% |
| 2004 | 12.0% | 41.4% |
| 2005 | 11.4% | 44.1% |
| 2006 | 11.9% | 45.1% |
| 2007 | 12.3% | 46.7% |
| 2008 | 12.2% | 45.5% |
| 2009 | 14.7% | 51.4% |
| 2010 | 13.6% | 55.9% |
| 2011 | 11.2% | 54.5% |
| 2012 | 10.6% | 55.1% |
| 2013 | 11.2% | 56.9% |
| 2014 | 11.2% | 58.0% |
| 2015 | 13.8% | 61.0% |
| 2016 | 16.4% | 62.0% |
| 2017 | 18.2% | 64.0% |
| 2018 | 19.3% | 66.2% |
| 2019 | 21.9% | 68.8% |
| 2020 | 29.9% | 75.4% |
| 2021 | 27.0% | 79.7% |
| 2022 | 25.8% | 77.2% |
| 2023 | 27.4% | 79.5% |
| 2024 | 29.0% | 83.1% |
Source: Median wage data from Economic Policy Institute, State of Working America Data Library, "Hourly wage percentiles - Real hourly wage (2024$)" and "Productivity and pay, real dollars per hour (2024$)".
Too often, the bar for policy success on wage growth has been set at anything greater than zero. So long as literal wage stagnation was avoided, discussion about the urgent task of boosting typical workers’ wage growth could be forestalled.
The unlawful abduction and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia puts all workers in peril
UPDATE August 25, 2025 — As detailed below, in March, 2025, the Trump administration illegally removed Sheetmetal worker Kilmar Abrego Garcia from his home in Maryland to an El Salvador mega-prison where he endured torture and inhumane conditions.
After months of legal challenges and public outcry, in July the administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S., then immediately brought criminal charges against him which his attorneys say are baseless and to which he has pleaded “not guilty.”
On August 25 in response to Abrego Garcia’s refusal to accept a plea deal in a case legal experts have described as “a farce,” the Trump administration took Abrego Garcia back into ICE custody and threatened to deport him to Uganda, a country he has no ties to and which the Trump State Department warns is dangerous for U.S. citizens to travel to because of “crime, terrorism, and laws targeting persons on the basis of sexual orientation.”
The Trump administration’s unlawful removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to a prison in El Salvador—and willful defiance of court orders to facilitate his return—are demonstrating a flagrant disregard for due process that puts all U.S. residents in danger. The case has become the biggest test of the rule of law so far in the second Trump administration and illustrates the threats now facing all working people if the administration’s abuses of power are left unchecked.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Abrego Garcia—a union sheet metal apprentice and father of three from Maryland—on March 12 while he was driving home from work. Despite the fact that Abrego Garcia had a work permit and court-ordered protection from deportation to El Salvador, the Trump administration flew him there and put him in a prison infamous for inhumane conditions and violence—known as CECOT and operated by Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele—in defiance of an initial court order, along with 238 others. Three-fourths of the people on that flight had no criminal record, according to major media investigations. Irrespective of their individual backgrounds, every single person on the flight was illegally removed from the U.S. and imprisoned for life without an opportunity to have their cases heard in court.
The Department of Justice admitted in court that removing Abrego Garcia from the U.S. was unlawful (what attorneys for the U.S. have called an “administrative error”), but the Trump administration has refused to take steps to bring him home. In the Oval Office last week, Trump and Bukele even seemed to gleefully bond over Abrego Garcia’s fate, with Trump announcing his intent to send U.S. citizens to CECOT next.
How Trump’s erasure of environmental data is endangering communities of color
President Trump has weakened the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by understaffing, underfunding, and restricting its work—leaving vulnerable communities at higher risk of environmental discrimination and racism. Within weeks of taking office, Trump revoked several key Biden-era executive orders on climate, public health, and environmental justice. While some of Trump’s actions have been reversed, his attacks toward the EPA remain unrelenting—continuing a pattern of sweeping environmental rollbacks that defined his first term. This time, however, his efforts are more targeted and dangerous, striking directly at the intersection of climate and race. Through data censorship and removal, the Trump administration is dismantling key tools for advancing environmental justice and protecting communities from environmental discrimination.
Trump’s gutting of public health institutions is setting the stage for our next crisis
What is happening?
The Trump administration is gutting our national public health infrastructure in real time, setting the stage for the next public health crisis. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), tasked with “protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to protect themselves,” is set to see a reduction in staff from 82,000 to 62,000 (a decrease of almost 25%) alongside major cuts to spending on contracts.Read more
Trump is putting crucial school funding at risk by dismantling the Department of Education: See how much federal funding your school district could lose
Last month, President Trump ordered Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to move forward with plans to close the Department of Education (ED). While this move is illegal and has been met with litigation, it shows the Trump administration’s hostility to public education and raises deep concerns about how public school districts across the country will be able to properly fund schools in the face of potential steep federal cuts.
The Trump administration occasionally makes vague promises that it will maintain current federal resources flowing to public schools, but this is far from assuring. Today’s federal education aid is extremely well-targeted toward high-need districts, and even if the level of federal aid to states is maintained, it’s not clear that it would remain as well-targeted.
Currently, a large share of ED funding goes to high-poverty districts through Title I funds and to special education programs through IDEA programs. These resources are crucial in offsetting the differences in local funding between low- and high-income districts, which rely heavily on property taxes. Over the last few years, COVID relief packages bolstered federal funding to public schools, with the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief fund helping districts recover from learning losses that occurred during the pandemic. In 2022, districts received 14.0% of their total revenue, on average, from federal sources.
To get a sense of how this federal money is distributed, we used data from the National Center for Education Statistics to calculate district-level estimates of federal revenue shares, the amount of Title I and IDEA funds each district receives, and the federal funding equivalent in the number of full-time teachers and staff. The results of this analysis can be seen in Figure A. Federal funding is crucial for schools across the country—the median amount a school district receives is $2.69 million. Federal funds make up less than 20% of a district’s budget in most cases (82%), but some districts rely on the federal government to contribute a much larger share of their funding—as much as 71.4% at the highest end.
At least 26 states have launched their own version of DOGE: These states are simply rebranding longstanding efforts to undermine government in service of the wealthy
The Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has wrought havoc on the federal government, diminishing its ability to perform essential work—like administering Social Security benefits for retirees, weather forecasting to predict tornadoes, and environmental pollution cleanup—while creating new inefficiencies and increased public costs. Now, many Republican governors and state lawmakers are demonstrating their loyalty to the Trump administration by setting up state-level versions of DOGE.Read more
A coalition of hundreds of employers is asking the Trump administration to override the NLRB and dictate labor law
This blog post was produced in collaboration with The Century Foundation.
With the Trump administration implementing a blizzard of anti-worker initiatives on a near-daily basis, it’s difficult to imagine that these early assaults could be only the tip of the iceberg. But President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk may well have far worse plans to attack U.S. workers and labor relations.
One little-seen proposal from outside the White House has the potential to upend our entire system of labor relations. It comes from the “Coalition for a Democratic Workplace” (CDW)—an anti-union trade association of several hundred employers and employer associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers. The coalition sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to repudiate and invalidate more than a dozen major decisions issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during the Biden administration, and to instruct all NLRB appointees and employees that they cannot treat these properly issued decisions as governing law.
The decisions in question address important issues like which workers have the right to form and join a union and what remedies are available to workers who are illegally fired in retaliation for exercising their rights in the workplace. Like all decisions issued by the NLRB—a multi-member body that acts as a court to adjudicate labor disputes—they were issued after full briefing and consideration of the issues and are treated as precedent governing subsequent cases.
Ordinarily, the way employers try to get the NLRB to change a decision they disagree with is to challenge the decision on appeal. Many of the decisions identified in the memo have been challenged, and those court proceedings are in progress. Employers also have the ability to argue to the Board in future cases that it should revisit its own precedent. The NLRB would then consider the issue and arguments and decide whether to change its earlier decision. This process comports with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires agencies to engage in “reasoned decision-making” when deciding cases. In other words, the agency has to explain itself when it changes course—it can’t just declare a new rule.
Trump attacks on federal agencies have steep implications for Black workers
In just over two months, the Trump administration has laid off tens of thousands of federal workers at several agencies. Probationary employees, foreign aid staff, and workers dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were the first targets of these cuts that have since spread to include dismantling the U.S. Department of Education—with more to follow. These unprecedented cuts follow President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s mission to downsize the federal government under the guise of cost savings and improved efficiency. While courts have ordered some of these workers to be reinstated, the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government have serious implications for federal workers and their families—especially Black workers.
For decades, the federal government has provided stable employment, excellent benefits, and key protections in hiring and promotions that supported a robust Black middle class. Through executive actions and legislation introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government adopted anti-discrimination and affirmative action practices that increased the number of Black workers in the federal government. Today, Black employees make up 18.5% of the federal workforce, which is greater than their overall share of the U.S. population.
Wage growth since 1979 has not been stagnant, but it has definitely been suppressed
We recently released our annual report assessing wage growth in the U.S. economy. We highlighted that strong and broadly shared wage growth since 2019 contrasted sharply with much slower and unequal rates of growth before that year. This report’s release is also a good time to be explicit about a judgement we’ve made in recent years at EPI to stop referring to the entire post-1979 period as one of “wage stagnation.”Read more
Missouri Republican state lawmakers are pushing a radical anti-worker tax plan
The piece has been updated to reflect the latest version of the bill passed by the Missouri Senate, which no longer eliminates the state earned income tax credit, reduces the corporate income tax, or changes the graduated income tax rate structure with a flat tax. The estimates of the bill’s overall cost and how much the tax changes would benefit the top 1% have been updated accordingly.
Conservative lawmakers’ preference to cut taxes is nothing new, but Missouri state lawmakers are currently considering a tax measure that would privilege the state’s wealthiest individuals in ways no other state with an income tax has done—by fully exempting all capital gains income from taxation. This change would exacerbate an already regressive state tax system, forcing low- and middle-income Missourians to shoulder a larger share of financing for state public services.
The bill being considered, HB 798, would cost roughly $1 billion in lost revenue.1 Beyond exempting capital gains from taxation, the bill would make other tax changes including some that could help lower-income earners, such as exempting diapers and feminine hygiene products from sales tax and increasing property tax exemptions for seniors. However, the impact of these changes pales in comparison to the benefits that would accrue to those with the highest incomes.
In fact, the bill would give the top 1% in the state an average tax cut that is 320 times larger than the tax benefits going to the middle-fifth of tax filers, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). All told, ITEP estimates that 80% of the proposed tax cuts would go to the top 5% of individuals (those earning $273,000 a year or more) with two-thirds of the benefits going to the top 1% (those with incomes above $660,000 a year).