Average Hourly Earnings by Industry

Reading these tables

Table B-3 comes from the Current Employment Statistics survey, the monthly survey of about 120,000 businesses and government agencies behind the payroll jobs number. Average hourly earnings are total payroll for the pay period divided by total hours paid, for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls, before deductions and including overtime pay, commissions and incentive pay but not irregular bonuses or benefits. Average weekly earnings are hourly earnings multiplied by average weekly hours, so they move with hours worked as well as with pay rates. Seasonally adjusted; "(p)" marks preliminary months that are revised in the next two releases, and the note records the annual benchmark revision.

The rows are the NAICS industry sectors as CES groups them, from goods-producing (mining and logging, construction, manufacturing with its durable and nondurable split) to private service-providing, with the eight service sectors indented beneath. Because these are averages over everyone in a sector, a sector's figure changes when its mix of high- and low-paid jobs changes, not only when pay rates move; that is why the Employment Cost Index exists for measuring pay change for the same jobs. The same hourly figure deflated by the CPI is on the real earnings page, and the Learn explainer contrasts payroll, household and OEWS measures.