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Revealed On 6 Sep 2025
President Donald Trump mentioned US employees are already benefitting from his financial insurance policies.
“The common American employee has already seen a $500 wage improve this yr,” Trump mentioned throughout an August 26 Cupboard assembly.
Trump’s White Home cherry-picked information that favours the next earnings acquire. Specialists want a unique measure, primarily based on a bigger pattern dimension, that exhibits a smaller improve.
How the White Home calculated a $500 pay bump
After we requested the White Home press workplace for Trump’s information supply, a spokesperson pointed us to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for median traditional weekly earnings of full-time wage and wage employees, seasonally adjusted.
This information exhibits that median weekly earnings rose from $1,185 within the fourth quarter of 2024 to $1,206 within the second quarter of 2025, which intently aligns with Trump’s second time period in workplace.
As a result of these figures characterize weekly earnings, we multiplied them by 26 to see how a lot a typical employee gained throughout the half-year interval. Multiplying by 26 weeks produces a cumulative $546 rise in wages. This measure doesn’t embody part-time employees, who account for a couple of quarter of the workforce, or account for inflation.
Specialists take into account different measures extra dependable
Economists mentioned the White Home’s chosen dataset isn’t as dependable as a unique set – and the extra dependable research exhibits a smaller wage improve.
The opposite dataset – common weekly earnings of all private-sector staff – is produced month-to-month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Over the primary six months of 2025, this statistic discovered a cumulative pay improve of about $121. That’s about one-quarter of what Trump mentioned.
A number of economists informed us that is the popular statistic for measuring wages, as a result of it’s primarily based on the Present Employment Statistics programme, which surveys 121,000 companies and authorities companies, collectively representing roughly 631,000 worksites. By comparability, the Present Inhabitants Survey, from which the White Home’s information is drawn, samples 60,000 eligible households.
“I all the time belief the payroll collection extra,” mentioned Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the centre-right American Motion Discussion board.
Dean Baker, cofounder of the liberal Heart for Financial and Coverage Analysis, agrees, saying the information within the smaller family survey “is extremely erratic”.
As well as, in line with this dataset, the wage rise throughout President Joe Biden’s final two quarters was $884. This undercuts the notion that Trump’s positive aspects have been unusually excessive.
Factoring in inflation
As a result of each of those measures fail to think about inflation, they overestimate employees’ positive aspects.
One other statistic, median traditional weekly inflation-adjusted earnings for full-time wage and wage employees, 16 years and over, additionally from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, is produced quarterly utilizing the smaller sample-size family survey and takes inflation into consideration.
By this metric, employees’ pay elevated by $1 per week between the ultimate quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2025.
Multiplied by 26 weeks, this provides as much as a $26 pay rise after inflation.
Our ruling
Trump mentioned: “The common American employee has already seen a $500 wage improve this yr.”
The White Home cited wage statistics that present median wages for full-time employees rose by a cumulative $546 throughout the first two quarters of 2025.
A special set of statistics – one which economists take into account extra correct as a result of it’s drawn from a a lot bigger pattern that features full- and part-time employees, and with much less volatility – exhibits a a lot smaller rise within the common US employee’s pay over that interval, about $121 over six months.
When inflation is factored in, full-time employees’ take-home pay rose by even much less – by about $26 throughout the first six months of 2025.
The assertion is partially correct however leaves out necessary particulars. We fee it Half True.
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