Guide

Is pay keeping up with inflation?

Private-sector workers earned an average of $37.81 an hour in September 2026, 3.0% more than in September 2025, while consumer prices changed 3.7% in the 12 months to September 2026. Pay keeps up when it grows faster than prices. Over the long run, the typical full-time worker's weekly pay was 5.3 times its early-1979 level in the third quarter of 2026, and prices were 4.9 times theirs.

Figures update themselves from 5 charts; newest data as of September 30, 2026.

Average hourly pay, September 2026

$37.81

Up 3.0% from September 2025

Inflation, 12 months to September 2026

3.7%

How much consumer prices changed

Typical full-time weekly pay, the third quarter of 2026

$1,232

$234 in early 1979

Hourly pay since 2006

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

Average hourly earnings of private-sector employees were $37.81 in September 2026, against $36.70 in September 2025 and $20.04 in March 2006, when the series begins. In the 12 months to September 2026, consumer prices changed 3.7%.

The average jumped in spring 2020 because the pandemic put mostly lower-paid people out of work, not because pay rose; an average can move when the mix of jobs changes.

The typical worker since 1979

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The median full-time worker, the one in the middle, earned $234 a week in early 1979 and $1,232 in the third quarter of 2026, 5.3 times as much. Consumer prices in September 2026 were 4.9 times their level of January 1979. When pay has grown more times over than prices, the typical paycheck buys more than it did.

Pay by kind of job

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

Pay differs far more between jobs than it changes in a year. In May 2025, the typical management job paid $126,520 a year and the typical food preparation and serving job $35,050, against $50,980 across all occupations.

What these numbers can and can't tell you

Hourly pay is BLS's average for all private-sector employees, seasonally adjusted, from its monthly survey of employers. Weekly pay is the median for full-time wage and salary workers from its survey of households, taken each quarter. Both are in dollars of the day, not adjusted for inflation; prices are the Consumer Price Index.

Neither counts benefits such as health insurance, and neither follows the same people over time, so a person's own raise can be bigger or smaller. BLS collected no data in October 2025, during a lapse in federal funding.

When BLS publishes new figures, the charts update themselves, and so does every number on this page.

Get new charts weekly

One email a week with the newest charts and their key numbers. No account needed.

Sources

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics (average hourly earnings of all employees, total private) (Public domain (U.S. government work)), data as of September 30, 2026, in these charts:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index (CPI-U, all items) (Public domain (U.S. government work)), data as of September 30, 2026, in these charts:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Usual Weekly Earnings (Current Population Survey) (Public domain (U.S. government work)), data as of September 30, 2026, in these charts:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (Public domain (U.S. government work)), data as of May 31, 2025, in these charts: