Average Hourly Earnings MoM

Average Hourly Earnings (AHE, gross average hourly pay) divides aggregate weekly payroll by aggregate weekly hours for all private nonfarm employees. It covers full-time and part-time workers paid for the 12th-of-month pay period, counting each payroll job separately. The survey covers about 121,000 businesses and government agencies (631,000 worksites), about one-third of all nonfarm payroll jobs.

It is not a wage rate (a stipulated hourly price) or labor cost. It excludes benefits, irregular bonuses, retroactive pay, and the employer's share of payroll taxes. It is not a fixed-basket index because overtime premiums, incentives, and shifts between high-paid and low-paid jobs move it.

Initial estimates appear about 3 weeks after the reference period, normally the first Friday of the next month, embargoed until 8:30 AM Eastern Time. Each release pairs establishment results (payrolls, hours, earnings) with household results (unemployment, participation), with AHE in Tables B-3 and B-8.

It reports the dollar level, the over-the-month change in cents and percent, and the 12-month percent change. It gives no thresholds or guidance, and states the next release date. Each preliminary figure revises twice over the next 2 months and re-anchors yearly to March universe counts, shifting summary AHE through employment weights.

Monthly change reflects gross payrolls, hours, premiums, and the mix of jobs, not just wage rates.

• Headline all-employee average: total private payroll divided by total private hours, with each industry weighted by its aggregate hours.

• Production and nonsupervisory subset: narrower private-sector gauge covering fabricating, processing, and service work below supervisory level, published alongside the headline.

• Industry cells: basic estimates by detailed industry, built up through 17 major sectors into goods-producing, private services, and total private.

• Overtime and scope limits: manufacturing overtime pay sits inside payroll (with an ex-overtime gauge for factories), while government pay sits outside CES entirely.

In the January 2024 reference month, published February 2, 2024, headline pay rose 19 cents, or 0.6%, to $34.55, up 4.5% over 12 months. The production and nonsupervisory subset rose 13 cents, or 0.4%, to $29.66, trailing the headline and showing worker-group mix matters. The average workweek fell 0.2 hour to 34.1 hours while payrolls added 353,000 jobs, so shorter hours offset part of the hourly gain. It is a textbook mix-effects case: headlines called it wage growth while shifts between high-paid and low-paid jobs can lift AHE alone.

1. Matched sample: use only establishments reporting for both the reference month and prior month, excluding zero-employee or missing reports, weighted to represent their stratum.

1. Basic-cell estimate: blend the prior month's published AHE (90% weight) with the matched sample payroll-to-hours ratio (10% weight). Then add the sample ratio's over-the-month change: a $26.00 ratio rising to about $26.33 adds about $0.33 to the base. With a $26.10 prior print, the $26.09 base gives about $26.42.

1. Aggregation: divide summed cell payroll by summed cell hours, weighting each industry by employment times average weekly hours (hours-weighted, same form for the subset). Two equal-employment industries at $26.42 over 40.0 hours and $20.00 over 30.0 hours average about $23.67.

1. Seasonal adjustment: adjust with X-13ARIMA-SEATS (U.S. Census Bureau seasonal software) using yearly models and fresh factors for the current and prior 2 months. Corrections cover pay-period length (short months otherwise print strong), 4-week versus 5-week intervals, and floating holidays.

1. Month change: compute [AHE(t) minus AHE(t-1)] divided by AHE(t-1) times 100, published in cents and percent, with AHE to the cent.