Lower-Wage Workers Lost Their Raise Lead
This chart follows the median year-over-year change in hourly pay for the same workers, grouped by their average wage quartile and smoothed over twelve months. It is an independent calculation from Census Basic CPS public-use records. It measures cash wages, not total compensation, and excludes equity and employer-provided benefits.
Cash wage and salary earnings only. The measure excludes stock grants, options, employer health insurance, retirement contributions, payroll taxes, and other benefits. For hourly-paid workers, the reported hourly rate excludes overtime, commissions, and tips. For other workers, usual weekly earnings can include those amounts when usually received. October 2025 CPS data were not collected.
What does it show?
The lowest wage quartile's median raise peaked at 8.0% in 2022-10. By 2026-06, it had slowed to 3.5%, below the 4.0% rate for the highest quartile.
Methodology
Independent calculation from Basic Current Population Survey outgoing-rotation public-use records. The sample includes employed wage and salary workers on a nonagricultural main job and excludes self-employed people, allocated earnings, top-coded earnings, and hourly pay below $2.13. Reported hourly pay is used for hourly-paid workers. For other workers, usual weekly earnings are divided by usual main-job hours, with actual hours used only when usual hours are unavailable. Cash wage and salary earnings only. The measure excludes stock grants, options, employer health insurance, retirement contributions, payroll taxes, and other benefits. For hourly-paid workers, the reported hourly rate excludes overtime, commissions, and tips. For other workers, usual weekly earnings can include those amounts when usually received. Respondents in month-in-sample 4 are matched to the same respondents in month-in-sample 8 one year later using both household identifiers and person line number, with age, sex, and race consistency checks. Quartiles rank matched workers by their average wage across the two observations. Each line is the average of monthly quartile medians over the trailing 12 calendar months. October 2025 was not collected, so windows spanning that month use the 11 available monthly estimates.