Real Production & Nonsupervisory Wage

A month earlier, in July 2026, the figure was the same.

The figure is BLS's average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory jobs on private payrolls, divided by the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) so that every month is in 1982-84 dollars. The group is about four in five private-sector jobs: production workers in factories, mines and construction, and non-managers in service industries, from cashiers and drivers to nurses, teachers and accountants. Government, farm and self-employed workers are left out. Pay is before taxes, includes overtime, and has included tips in most service industries since 2007.

This is an average over jobs, so it shifts when the mix of higher- and lower-paid jobs changes, not only when pay rates change. In April 2020, heavy job losses among lower-paid workers pushed it to a peak that BLS said did not reflect higher pay; April to June 2020 are left out of comparisons here. The latest two months are preliminary and are revised, and revisions have changed values by up to about 5 cents, so moves under 6 cents are described here as little changed.

BLS's own real earnings figure for this group divides by a different price index, the CPI-W for wage earners and clerical workers, so its level is not the same as this page's. Comparisons that reach back decades rely on an older CPI-U history that BLS has not revised for later changes in method, so long-run comparisons carry that caveat. There is no value for October 2025, when BLS did not collect consumer prices during the federal government shutdown.

Real Median Weekly Earnings is a median of full-time workers' weekly pay from the household survey, a different measure. The Real Federal Minimum Wage uses the same CPI-U and base years, and the Productivity-Pay Wedge compares pay for all workers with output per hour.