Thursday and Friday saw several significant data releases. Let’s catch up.
Wages
The Employment Cost Index was released for Q2 Friday morning. This is a particularly important release because unlike the monthly “average hourly wages” number, this report normalizes by job category, e.g., it compares clerks’ wages in Q1 with clerks’ wages in Q2. So if clerks have experienced widespread wage cuts, it should show up here. Given the many anecdotes of wage cuts I have read and heard about since the pandemic began, I have been waiting to see what this number would be.