Wage Stagnation vs. Living Wages for U.S. Workers Today

At the end of last August, President Donald Trump asserted that average wages for U.S. workers had risen by $546 during the first six months since he returned to office in January 2025. As with virtually all of Trump’s pronouncements, this one bears little relationship to the truth. In fact, when using the most reliable government data on wages and then controlling for inflation, workers’ wages did still rise under Trump, but by $26—that’s 95% less than the $546 average pay raise proclaimed by Trump.

The reality of wage stagnation under Trump is fully consistent with his broader attack on working people. As just one example, the labor historian Joseph McCartin called Trump’s move in March to cancel the union rights of more than one million federal government workers “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history.”

Still worse is that wage stagnation to date under Trump follows what is now a 50-year pattern.   In 1973, the average nonsupervisory employee earned $29.15 an hour (in 2024 dollars). As of 2024, that average wage was $30.13. Over the same time period, the average productivity of U.S. workers—the average value of what they produce when they show up at work—rose by 150%. If these workers had received raises every year between 1973 and 2024 just equal to their increased productivity, but not a penny more, their average hourly pay today would be $72.88 an hour. 

To further clarify the current pay levels for nonsupervisory workers, compare their current average hourly wage of $30.13 with what we could consider a living wage standard. There are various ways in which one can define what we mean by a living wage. In A Living Wage:  American Workers and the Making of a Consumer Society, Lawrence Glickman defines the term qualitatively, as being a wage level that offers workers “the ability to support families, to maintain self-respect and to have both the means and leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation.”  

A research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has produced a Living Wage Calculator that provides detailed annual quantitative estimates of living wage standards for every state and county in the United States, as measured relative to the cost of living in each area. Their definition of what constitutes a living wage in a given community is less ambitious than the standard suggested by Glickman. Specifically, according to the MIT Calculator’s definition, “The living wage is the basic income standard that, if met, draws a very fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity. In light of this fact, the living wage is perhaps better defined as a minimum subsistence wage for persons living in the United States.”

Working from this lower-end but still reasonable definition, the MIT researchers estimate living wages for various family household types, including those with one or two adults and between zero to three children. For example, their living wage estimates at the state level for family households with one adult and one child range between a low of $32.62 an hour in Mississippi and a high of $55.15 an hour in Massachusetts. These figures yield the striking result that even the low-end Mississippi living wage of $32.62 an hour is 8% above the $30.13 average now being earned by nonsupervisory workers in the United States. The $55.15 Massachusetts living wage is 83% higher than the current average hourly wage of $30.13.      

Since the early 1990s a strong political movement in the United States has fought to establish living wage standards at the municipal and state levels. The movement has  achieved some significant successes. Between 1994 and 2010, living wage laws were enacted in over 125 cities and counties. At the state level, 30 states and Washington, D.C., now have minimum wage rates above the poverty-level federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Washington State has the highest state-level minimum wage at $16.66 an hour. The minimum wage for Washington, D.C., is still higher, at $17.95 an hour.  

Yet these state and city living wage rates remain uniformly well below even the MIT Calculator’s lower-end standards. Given the broader 50-year pattern of wage stagnation in the United States, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the living wage movement has not been successful enough, despite great efforts by thousands of organizers and activists throughout the country.

Under Trump, we can only expect more of the same outright lies and vicious assaults on workers’ rights, job opportunities, and living standards. It is therefore now imperative to revive the living wage movement throughout the country. A ramped-up living wage movement can become one important force contributing to the resistance against Trump and Trumpism. More fundamentally still, a revived living wage movement can be a means for building working class power and, with that power, delivering pay levels for nonsupervisory wages that—after 50 years of U.S. wage stagnation—can reach true living wage standards.  

Robert Pollin is a distinguished university professor of economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.