On Nov 15, 2010, at 11:10 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
> I made extensive use of series: CEU0500000049 non-supervisory workers
> average hourly wage in real dollars. Historical through current. That
> database is discontinued. However the data is still maintain, because
> the report to the President has that same data from the 60's through
> 2009 for private industry. Anyone know the series Id that replaced it?
> Or another way to find it. The standard BLS query screens I found
> provide data only in nominal dollars, though perhaps I was looking at
> the wrong screen.
I've always just deflated the nominal wage by the CPI. The CEU prefix means not seasonally adjusted, by the way. Here's the series code for the SA one (the CES prefix means SA):
CES0500000008
They're now also reporting the average hourly wage for all employees (not just nonsup ones). It's
CES0500000003.
The code for the CPI (SA) is:
CUSR0000SA0.
The BLS often uses the CPI-W (wage workers and clerical workers) to deflate earnings. I don't think that's fair - why should the grunts have a price index all their own? Why not for the whole society? (In practice the difference isn't all that huge.) But that's the CPI-U (all urban consumers). If you want the CPI-W, it's:
CWSR0000SA0.
Doug