There are two data sets here. The first is an index of the money wages paid for common or unskilled labor (1774 to the present) and the second is the average hourly compensation of production workers in manufacturing (1790 to present).

It should be emphasized that both the unskilled-labor costs series and the production workers compensation series are in nominal rather than real terms. This means that they are not adjusted for inflation (changes in the cost of living). So the increase in the series over time exaggerates the real (deflated) cost of labor.

Money Wage of Unskilled Labor
This series is an index of the average money wage of a "common" or unskilled laborer. Until the late 19th century, common labor usually meant outdoor work, on or off farms, in tasks that required no training. With the growth of manufacturing, those in the factory called "laborers" or helpers were regarded as the unskilled. After WWII, the unskilled were not counted separately, so the index is constructed from the compensation of such jobs as janitors, porters, and cleaners.

For more information, see "Sources of the Unskilled Wage."

Production Workers Compensation
These data are from Two Centuries of Compensation for Production Workers in Manufacturing (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), by Lawrence H. Officer. This series is restricted to production workers, also called blue-collar workers, hourly rated workers, or non-office workers. The series includes both money earnings and benefits. Thus it is legitimately an average-hourly-compensation series, and is expressed as the number of dollars per work-hour. Of course, there are production workers in other sectors, but this series covers only manufacturing. Workers on salary (white-collar workers, office workers, nonproduction workers), such as clerks and executives, are excluded.

There are various sources of these data, and sources change over time; however the most recent figures are taken from official series. In particular, the money-earnings component is computed as the ratio of total wages to total work-hours using Census data. The benefits component is computed as the product of benefits to earnings (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data) and money-earnings per work-hour. Benefits were very small before the 1930s. Full details on construction are in the volume stated above. It also provides the breakdown of the total between earnings and benefits. Since 2007, the data have been linked to the BLS series: Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Total Compensation, Manufacturing, Private Industry (CMU2013000000000D).

For more information, see "Characteristics of the Production-Worker Compensation Series."

Please read our Note on Data Revisions.

Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, "Annual Wages in the United States, 1774-Present," MeasuringWorth, . URL: http://www.measuringworth.com/uswages/

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