Jason Cohen
Contributor
June 01, 2023 2:07 PM ET
The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revised a wage growth estimate by a massive margin, showing real wages actually declined in the fourth quarter of 2022, the agency reported on Thursday.
In March, the BLS previously reported a fourth-quarter increase of 4.9% for hourly compensation in nonfarm businesses, but updated it to a decrease of 0.7% on Thursday, according to its revised Productivity and Costs report. At the same time hourly wages fell, inflation rose, leading to a 4.7% decline in “real hourly compensation, which takes into account consumer prices,” according to the BLS.
The BLS had previously estimated that real hourly compensation increased by 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the revised report.
“The driver of the revision to 4th quarter data on compensation per hour is the revision to source data on employee compensation for 2022 Q4, published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on May 25th,” the BLS told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The referenced report states that “wages and salaries are now estimated to have increased $53.0 billion in the fourth quarter, a downward revision of $135.4 billion.”
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https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/01/biden-wage-data-revision/
