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ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

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Figure 1-3<br />

Real Hourly Wage Growth Over Business Cycles,<br />

Cycle Peak to Cycle Peak<br />

Percent Change, Annual Rate<br />

1.0<br />

0.5<br />

0.5<br />

0.3<br />

0.8<br />

0.0<br />

-0.5<br />

-0.2<br />

-1.0<br />

-1.5<br />

-2.0<br />

-2.5<br />

-1.4<br />

Start Date: Nov-1973<br />

End Date: Jan-1980<br />

-2.1<br />

Jan-1980<br />

Jul-1981<br />

Jul-1981<br />

Jul-1990<br />

Jul-1990 Mar-2001 Dec-2007<br />

Mar-2001 Dec-2007 Oct-2016<br />

Note: Wages for private production and nonsupervisory workers.<br />

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research; Bureau of Labor Statistics, Real Earnings;<br />

CEA calculations.<br />

shared: households at the bottom and middle of the income distribution saw<br />

faster real income gains from 2014 to 2015 than did households at the top of<br />

the income distribution.<br />

While the labor market has made major improvements, some challenges<br />

still remain. The share of employees working part-time for economic<br />

reasons, and, accordingly, the broadest measure of underemployment, the<br />

U-6 rate (of which this share is a component), remain modestly elevated<br />

relative to their respective pre-recession averages. As discussed below, labor<br />

force participation, particularly for many workers in their prime working<br />

years, has been declining for decades, a key challenge for the U.S. labor market<br />

in the years ahead. And while real wage growth has picked up in recent<br />

years, more work remains to reverse decades of limited income growth for<br />

many middle-class families.<br />

Output and Economic Growth<br />

Like employment, economic output contracted sharply in the Great<br />

Recession. Real GDP peaked in the fourth quarter of 2007 before falling<br />

rapidly over the following year. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, real GDP<br />

contracted at an annualized rate of 8.2 percent. As discussed in Box 1-1,<br />

this drop was more severe than initially estimated: the first estimate of GDP<br />

Eight Years of Recovery and Reinvestment | 25

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