November 20, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Composition of change in real earnings in October 

Real average weekly earnings increased by 0.2 percent from September to October after seasonal adjustment.

Composition of change in real average weekly earnings of production or nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls, October 2001
[Chart data—TXT]

The increase in real average weekly earnings reflected a 0.1-percent increase in average hourly earnings and a 0.4-percent decrease in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). These movements were partially offset by a 0.3-percent decline in average weekly hours.

These earnings data are a product of the Current Employment Statistics Program. These data are for production and nonsupervisory workers in private nonfarm establishments; the data are preliminary and subject to revision. Find out more in "Real Earnings in October 2001," news release USDL 01-417.

Happy 10th Birthday, TED!

The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

Find out more about the story of TED