---
title: "Weekly Economic and Commercial Real Estate Update: November 16th"
description: With November’s CPI showing the largest price pressures since the 1980’s last week, the market continues to be hyper-focused on drivers of inflation pressures. One area that is getting a lot of attention has been wage inflation.  Wages have been rising in 2021 mainly due to a lack of available labor, heavy stimulus, and a massive number of job openings with the U.S. economy in recovery over the past year.
---

[Keyser Blog | Commercial Real Estate Advocates ](https://blog.keyser.com)

# [Weekly Economic and Commercial Real Estate Update: November 16th](https://blog.keyser.com/weekly-economic-and-commercial-real-estate-update-november-16th)

 Written by [Brian Uretzky](https://blog.keyser.com/author/brian-uretzky) | 2:00 PM on November 16, 2021

With November’s CPI showing the largest price pressures since the 1980’s last week, the market continues to be hyper-focused on drivers of inflation pressures.

 

One area that is getting a lot of attention has been wage inflation. Wages have been rising in 2021 mainly due to a lack of available labor, heavy stimulus, and a massive number of job openings with the U.S. economy in recovery over the past year.

 

A popular narrative in the market is that rising wages are great because it means people have more money to spend on goods and services. While I love the sound of rising wages myself, the story isn’t so great for wage earners today. Despite rising wages, inflation is rising at a faster rate than wages; meaning purchasing power for wage earners is actually falling.

As an example, let’s take a look at two charts provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics over the past week and a half.

 

First, November’s average hourly earnings numbers showed material earnings growth in October.  Average Hourly Earnings now sit right around 5% in terms of annual growth compared to a long term average of 2.7%:

 

Looks great, right? But, look at earnings when adjusted for inflation on a monthly basis over the past year:

 

 

Average Hourly Earnings (adjusted for inflation) over the past year is actually down 1.3%.  Purchasing power has been weaker over the past year despite heavy spending and the recovery.

 

The following chart shows a longer term history of Average Hourly Earnings (adjusted for inflation):

 

 

From 2013-2019, inflation adjusted average hourly earnings were positive, and I think most people would agree that the 2013-2019 period felt like a pretty healthy period for our economy as a whole.  

 

In many ways, a lot of the fears surrounding inflation and the recovery would disappear if we could just get inflation adjusted earnings to turn positive.

[View full post](https://blog.keyser.com/weekly-economic-and-commercial-real-estate-update-november-16th)

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Brian Uretzky"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2023-07-31T23:30:33.372Z",
  "datePublished" : "2021-11-16T14:00:00Z",
  "headline" : "Weekly Economic and Commercial Real Estate Update: November 16th",
  "image" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "height" : 800,
    "url" : "https://6402157.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6402157/Weekly-Economic-and-Commercial-Real-Estate-Update-November-16th.jpg",
    "width" : 1500
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://blog.keyser.com/weekly-economic-and-commercial-real-estate-update-november-16th",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "height" : 60,
      "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png",
      "width" : 60
    },
    "name" : "Keyser | Commercial Real Estate Advocates "
  }
}
```