One commenter on my inflation monster post suggests that while private-sector wages may be going nowhere, the story is different for “rapacious” workers in the public sector. Ah, those pillaging schoolteachers (because that’s largely who we’re talking about).
Anyway, the BLS doesn’t provide an hourly wage series for public sector workers, but it does offer the employment cost index, a measure of wage and benefit costs adjusted for worker characteristics. Here it is:
Feel the rapacity!
Update: First of all, a slightly peevish note to some readers: if a graph says, right there at the top, “12-month percent change”, then you might consider the possibility that the y-axis is showing, um, the 12-month percent change.
Second, about the public-private comparison: there are comparable data for private-sector workers, and they’re pretty similar. Larry Mishel points me to this paper (pdf), which finds basically the same (low) rise in real compensation in both the public and private sectors.