The hourly vs. salary wage gap
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hourly wages went up 1.7% over the past year, according to Indeed Hiring Lab. Salaried wages went up 2.9%, reversing a 2022 trend in which hourly raises outpaced salary raises. Still, there’s one thing all workers have in common: Neither group kept pace with inflation. Also in this episode: Oil futures tell us where fuel prices are headed, convenience stores transcend utility, and a travel nurse tells us about life on the road.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, I need a good word to describe an economy that is slowing, but where prices are rising. |
| 0:08.4 | Anybody have any ideas? |
| 0:10.5 | From American public media. |
| 0:13.2 | This is Marketplace. |
| 0:24.5 | In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl. |
| 0:25.6 | It is Friday. |
| 0:28.0 | Today, this one is the 29th of May. |
| 0:30.1 | Good as it always is, everybody, to have you along. |
| 0:31.8 | All right, I was kidding. |
| 0:35.3 | I know the word for a slowing economy where prices are rising. |
| 0:40.3 | The question is whether stagflation is where we are. |
| 0:43.3 | So let us discuss, test my premise, if you will. |
| 0:45.9 | Amara Moquay is at Bloomberg, Sudip Reddy, is at MS now. |
| 0:46.4 | Hey, you two. |
| 0:47.6 | Hey, okay. |
| 0:50.0 | Amari, you get to go first. |
| 0:51.3 | Let's see. |
| 0:54.3 | GDP comes in this week at 1.6 percent, the revision for the first quarter, annualized, of course. |
| 0:58.6 | PCE, the Fed's preferred measure of inflation. |
| 1:00.9 | I'm required by law to say that phrase. |
| 1:03.0 | Comes in at 3.8%. |
| 1:05.5 | It sounds like stagflation to me. |
... |
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