Earlier Period
$
Later Period
$
Use the same pay period for both amounts (e.g. both monthly, both bi-weekly). The % result is the same either way — the dollar figures are only meaningful when both are in the same unit.
Real Pay Change (Inflation-Adjusted)
Nominal Pay Change
CPI Inflation (Same Period)
Pay Needed to Keep Up With Inflation
How we calculated this
The Bigger Picture
Your raise doesn't exist in a vacuum. Here's what's been happening to workers and corporations.
Workers Got More Productive. Their Pay Didn't Follow.
Productivity (output per hour) and real hourly wages indexed to 1979 Q1 = 100. Wages are average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, adjusted for inflation. The red gap is the share of productivity growth that went to profits instead of workers' paychecks.
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Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) via OPHNFB (productivity) and AHETPI (nominal wages, deflated by CPIAUCSL), FRED — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
The gap is real. Here's what closes it.
Right now
- Negotiate. Bring data. Employers know this gap exists — most workers don’t. Now you do.
- Don’t mistake a cost-of-living adjustment for a raise. A 3% increase in a 6% inflation year is a pay cut. Run the numbers above.
- Talk to your coworkers about pay. Wage secrecy benefits employers, not workers. In most U.S. states, discussing your salary is a protected right.
What actually fixes it
- Unions. The productivity-pay gap started widening in the early 1980s — the same decade union membership began its decline. That’s not a coincidence. Unionized workers earn roughly 10–15% more than non-union peers in the same industry.
- Policy. Minimum wage increases, pay transparency laws, and profit-sharing requirements move the needle. Know where your representatives stand.
- The Economic Policy Institute tracks this data and advocates for workers. Their research underpins most of what you see in this chart.