Since I mentioned blue-collar earnings this morning, I thought you might be interested in a longer-term look at what’s technically called the “production and nonsupervisory hourly earnings” series:
The light green at the end shows how much wages will increase in 2019 if they keep up the pace of the first four months. Just think: after a mere 40 years, blue-collar hourly wages have finally made up their losses from the short (but sharp) Iranian oil-embargo slump followed by their grim decade-long slide during the Reagan-Bush era. Thanks to increases during the Clinton and Obama presidencies—interrupted only by the stagnation of the Bush 43 presidency—blue-collar workers are finally making as much as they did in the mid-70s.
