EJ Antoni, formerly nominated to be BLS Commissioner, says so at 5:50 on this FoxBusiness clip. True? Kind of. Maybe. Sort of. Well, not quite. Let’s take a look at a time series.
Figure 1: Average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, using CPI (brown), chained CPI (green), and AIER Everday Price Index (blue), all in 2025M01$. Chained CPI seasonally adjusted by author using X-13 in logs. Source: BLS via FRED, American Institute for Economic Research, and author’s calculations.
While CPI deflated average hourly earnings are above January levels, Everyday Price Index deflated earnings are just barely above (and certainly below December levels). Interestingly, real average hourly earnings are falling in all measures in September.
If one extends the comparison period back to January 2021, then it’s still true that CPI deflated hourly earnings rose faster than prices. Just sayin’.
And this guy wanted to be our latex salesman?
