October Jobs Report Shows Incomes Continuing to Decline

One of the negative features of the current economic recovery has been declining incomes of average Americans.

This trend continued in October.

The Labor Department reported Friday that despite 171,000 jobs being added to nonfarm payrolls in October, average hourly earnings for such employees edged down by 1 cent to $23.58. 

Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees also dropped by 1 cent to $19.79.

This continues a trend reported by the Census Bureau in August finding that since the recovery began in June 2009, median household incomes have fallen 4.8 percent adjusted for inflation.

Also of note, the manufacturing workweek edged down by 0.1 hour to 40.5 hours. The average
workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls also edged
down by 0.1 hour to 33.6 hours.

As such, despite the positive headline numbers in this report, this is by no means a strong jobs market this far into an economic recovery.