Chart: Young workers’ wages grow more quickly in response rising employment than older workers’ wages : Change in median and average annual real wage growth in response to a 1-percentage-point increase in the employment-to-population ratio, by age group, 1980–2019

Young workers’ wages grow more quickly in response rising employment than older workers’ wages : Change in median and average annual real wage growth in response to a 1-percentage-point increase in the employment-to-population ratio, by age group, 1980–2019

	Ages 16–24	Ages 25+
Median	0.33	0.17
Average	0.28	0.12

Notes: Each bar is the coefficient from the regression of the real annual percent change in a given percentile’s wage on the measure of labor market tightness. Regressions include state and year fixed effects. See Bivens and Zipperer, The Importance of Locking in Full Employment (2018).

Source: Authors’ analysis of annual, state-level aggregations of EPI Current Population Survey Extracts, Version 1.0.9 (2020), https://microdata.epi.org, 1979–2019.

View the underlying data on epi.org.