February 22, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Real average weekly earnings down in January

Real average weekly earnings fell by 0.5 percent from December to January after seasonal adjustment.

Composition of change in real average weekly earnings of production or nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls, January 2002
[Chart data—TXT]

This decline in real average weekly earnings was due to a 0.3-percent drop in average weekly hours and a 0.2-percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Average hourly earnings were unchanged.

These earnings data are a product of the Current Employment Statistics Program. These data are for production and nonsupervisory workers in private nonfarm establishments. Earnings data are preliminary and subject to revision. Find out more in "Real Earnings in January 2002," news release USDL 02-96.

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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.

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