Trends in Men's Wages, 1981–2014

The Social Security Administration maintains wage and salary earnings records for all American workers. From those administrative records, the agency extracts a 1 percent sample called the Continuous Work History Sample (CWHS) for research and statistical purposes. This article uses CWHS data to examine trends in men's real wage and salary earnings from 1981 through 2014. It first describes broad trends for all men aged 25–59. Then it describes the trends over that same span for men in each of seven 5-year age intervals (25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, 45–49, 50–54, and 55–59), with detail by individual birth cohort. A series of charts shows how men's real wages changed across age groups and birth cohorts within each age group