Table 1

Hourly wages of all workers, by wage percentile, selected years, 1979–2020

Year/range 10th 20th 30th 40th 50th 60th 70th 80th 90th 95th
1979 $9.87 $10.87 $12.80 $14.90 $17.00 $20.12 $23.56 $27.67 $33.74 $41.66
1989 8.19 10.17 12.27 14.56 17.05 20.17 24.03 28.47 36.34 44.88
2000 9.21 11.27 13.42 15.24 18.11 21.27 25.49 30.89 40.67 52.02
2007 9.45 11.38 13.43 15.76 18.71 21.95 26.25 32.48 43.71 56.45
2018 10.27 12.27 14.34 16.43 19.38 22.70 27.59 34.84 48.94 65.05
2019 10.20 12.46 14.82 16.91 19.57 23.23 28.29 35.42 48.68 67.97
2020 11.02 13.42 15.31 17.98 20.92 24.96 30.02 37.94 52.88 78.28
Annualized percent changes
1979–1989 -1.9% -0.7% -0.4% -0.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.2% 0.3% 0.7% 0.7%
1989–2000 1.1% 0.9% 0.8% 0.4% 0.5% 0.5% 0.5% 0.7% 1.0% 1.3%
2000–2007 0.4% 0.1% 0.0% 0.5% 0.5% 0.4% 0.4% 0.7% 1.0% 1.2%
2007–2019 0.6% 0.8% 0.8% 0.6% 0.4% 0.5% 0.6% 0.7% 0.9% 1.6%
2019–2020 8.0% 7.7% 3.3% 6.3% 6.9% 7.4% 6.1% 7.1% 8.6% 15.2%

Note: Wages are adjusted for inflation using the CPI-U-RS. The xth-percentile wage is the wage at which x% of wage earners earn less and (100−x)% earn more.

Source: Authors' analysis of EPI Current Population Survey Extracts, Version 1.0.14 (2021), https://microdata.epi.org.

Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website.

This chart appears in:

Previous chart: «

Next chart: »