February 14, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Finance industry led the way in earnings in 1990s

Between 1989 and 1999, average hourly earnings in the finance, insurance, and real estate industry grew from $9.53 to $14.62—an increase of 53.4 percent. This was the biggest increase in hourly earnings among the major industry divisions, both in terms of level and percent increase.

[Chart data—TXT]

The services industry recorded the second largest increase at 42.4 percent while wholesale trade was third at 40.3 percent. The smallest percent increase in hourly earnings—24.8 percent—took place in the transportation and public utilities industry. In private industry overall, average hourly earnings rose by 37.1 percent from 1989 to 1999.

These data are a product of the BLS Current Employment Statistics Program. Average hourly earnings figures in this article are for production and nonsupervisory workers. Find out more in "Job Growth in the 1990s: a retrospect," by Julie Hatch and Angela Clinton, Monthly Labor Review, December 2000.