Today's economy is historically strong
| Since end of 2022 | 2007–2019 | 2017–2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average hourly earnings (AHE), all workers (inflation adjusted) | |||
| End of period value | $35.36 | $34.52 | $34.52 |
| Average annualized change (%) | 1.2% | 0.8% | 0.9% |
| AHE, production/nonsupervisory workers (inflation adjusted) | |||
| End of period value | $30.33 | $28.99 | $28.99 |
| Average annualized change (%) | 1.3% | 0.8% | 1.0% |
| Unemployment rate (%) | |||
| Overall | 3.8 | 6.4 | 4.0 |
| Black workers | 5.7 | 11.1 | 6.7 |
| Hispanic workers | 4.8 | 8.1 | 4.7 |
| Less than high school | 5.8 | 9.8 | 5.8 |
| High school degree only | 4.0 | 6.6 | 4.1 |
| Some college | 3.2 | 5.5 | 3.4 |
| Employment-to-population ratio (%), ages 25–54 | |||
| Overall | 80.7 | 77.2 | 79.3 |
| Black workers | 77.8 | 71.4 | 75.8 |
| Hispanic workers | 78.1 | 74.1 | 77.0 |
| Average monthly job growth | |||
| Overall | 217,000 | 93,000 | 176,000 |
| Private sector | 170,000 | 91,000 | 164,000 |
| Real GDP growth (average annualized % change) | |||
| Overall | 2.9% | 1.8% | 2.5% |
| Per capita | 2.4% | 1.1% | 1.9% |
| Applications for new businesses | |||
| Average monthly applications | 144,206 | 102,157 | 105,580 |
| Average annualized % change | 2.4% | -1.0% | 2.3% |
| Inflation-adjusted stock prices (S&P composite) | |||
| End of period | 4841.6 | 2410.3 | 3391.9 |
| Average annualized change (%) | 19.6% | 6.6% | 10.0% |
| CPI inflation | |||
| Average rate | 3.7% | 1.8% | 2.1% |
| Average monthly change (ppt) | -0.20% | -0.01% | -0.01% |
Source: Data on average hourly earnings for all workers and production workers and monthly job-growth from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Data on unemployment and prime-age employment-to-population (EPOP) ratios from the Current Population Survey (CPS) program at the BLS. Data from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the prices program at the BLS. Data on real gross domestic product (GDP) from the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) at the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Data on new business applications from the Weekly Business Formations program at the Census Bureau. Data on real stock prices from Robert Shiller’s online data housed at: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm. Hourly earnings are deflated by the CPI-U from the BLS. Average hourly earnings for all workers unavailable before 2006. Because they are not available on a seasonally-adjusted basis, prime-age EPOPs by race compares last 12 months of data to the 24 months before the end of 2019 and to the full 2007-2019 period.