A key cost in the production of food is labor. As a consequence, one of the drivers of rising food prices is higher wages in the food sector. But, just how much have wages increased in the food sector?
Fortunately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks wage rates throughout the economy, including in several sectors specifically related to food production and food service. My colleague, Anna Subramaniam and I worked together to collect and communicate these wage data in a way that I hope is useful to see what is happening to wage rates across the food industry. Check out the data dashboard on our Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability (CFDAS) website.
For each sector of the food economy (e.g., food manufacturing, grocery, restaurants, etc.), we report three statistics: A) the average wage rate ($/hour), B) the number of hours worked peer week, and C) average earnings in a week (Note: C = A *B). The user can choose to see nominal or real (inflation-adjusted) earnings (either per hour or per week).
Below is a screenshot of the dashboard showing hourly wage rates for three broad areas of the food economy: food manufacturing, limited-service restaurants, and supermarkets/grocery. Wages in food manufacturing are the highest of these three at around $25/hour. For food service and grocery, one can see a fairly steady increase in hourly wages even after adjusting for inflation.
It is also instructive to look at hours worked. As shown above, hourly wages increased slightly for all three sectors just after the pandemic. But, we only see wages of those who have jobs - not of those who were laid off. As the figure below shows, there was a drop-off in hours worked in food manufacturing and limited service restaurants at the same time there was an increase in hours worked in grocery.
Feel free to play around with the dashboards yourself. The dashboard should auto-update every month as the BLS releases new data.