It is the most important decline for the reason that Bureau of Labor Statistics started inflation-adjusted information in 2001. What’s extra, it comes at a time when compensation prices — which incorporates the wages employers pay plus well being, retirement and different advantages — are rising swiftly, earlier than accounting for inflation, as employers attempt to fill positions and maintain on to their employees.
The inflation-adjusted value of wages and salaries fell 3.6%, whereas profit prices dropped 4.2%, each the most important decreases for the reason that collection began 21 years in the past.
“For staff, that is dangerous information,” Jason Furman, an economics professor at Harvard College and former chair of the Council of Financial Advisers within the Obama administration, stated of the inflation-adjusted information. “Wages are falling very quickly during the last yr and are manner beneath the place they had been two years in the past.”
Prices rising swiftly earlier than accounting for inflation
Compensation prices for civilian staff elevated by a larger-than-expected 1.4% for the primary quarter of 2022, earlier than adjusting for inflation, in response to the index. The price of wages and salaries rose 1.2% and profit prices jumped 1.8% from December.
Trying on the previous yr ending in March, the unadjusted value of compensation soared 4.5%, in comparison with 4.0% for the 12-month interval ending in December.
The price of wages and salaries elevated 4.7%, in comparison with 4.5% for the yr ending in December, and profit prices rose 4.1%, in comparison with 2.8%.
“What they’re involved about is that this larger inflation has persevered for therefore lengthy that if it begins to seep into client companies’ expectations, then that is more durable to wring inflation out of the system than simply merely ready for provide chains to right,” she stated.