Wage earnings are the largest source of income for many workers, and wage gains are a primary lever for raising living standards. Evidence that wage growth has stagnated among low- and middle-wage workers has therefore been viewed with concern and has raised questions about the patterns and magnitudes of these trends. This report addresses such questions by examining real (inflation-adjusted) wage trends over the 1979 to 2017 period. Specifically, it uses cross-sectional data collected from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a nationally representative sample of workers, to estimate real hourly wages at the 10 th , 50 th (median), and 90 th percentiles of the wage distribution in each year, and then explores how those wage levels change over time. Our sample comprises employed (full- and part-time), nonmilitary nonfarm wage and salary earners aged 25 to 64 years. Finally, all hourly wages were converted to 2017 dollars using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. City Average (CPI-U). Appendix A provides details on the methodology used in this report. It is important to note that, while wages are typically the primary component of compensation—accounting for about 70% of compensation for the average worker—non-wage compensation, such as employer-provided health insurance, paid leave, and retirement contributions, plays a role in living standards as well. Workers may experience gains or losses in wages but overall compensation may not track these changes exactly because of the cost of non-wage compensation. For example, a recent study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that while the overall median wage fell between 2007 and 2014, total compensation was statistically unchanged, mainly due to the rising costs of health insurance. In addition, due to the relative costs and provisions of benefits for workers at different points in the wage distribution, trends in wage and compensation inequality may differ over time. Because the data are cross-sectional, the trends identified in this report describe patterns among groups of workers at different percentiles in the wage distribution, but not the experience of individual workers. That is, because the CPS does not track the wages of a fixed group of workers over long periods of time, a finding that median wages have stagnated over the 1979 to 2017 period does not necessarily mean that a worker earning the median wage in 1979 personally experienced zero wage growth over this period. Individuals can and do move throughout the wage distribution over time. Instead, wage stagnation at the median indicates that the wage level below which half the population earns has not risen between 1979 and 2017, as might be expected if overall living standards had increased broadly (i.e., such that the entire wage distribution shifted upwards). In summary, analysis of the data shows that overall wages rose in real terms over the 1979 to 2017 period at the top of the wage distribution, increased slightly at the middle of the wage distribution, and rose to an even lesser degree at the bottom of the distribution. Within these overall trends, there were important differences in patterns across demographic groups (e.g., median wages for women increased, whereas those for men declined). Differential patterns of wage growth narrowed the gap between median earnings of men and women (i.e., the gender wage gap), but other wage gaps did not show such change over time. Real wages fell for workers with lower levels of educational attainment (i.e., a high school degree or less) and rose for highly educated workers, contributing to a wage gap between workers with different educational attainment that grew markedly over the 1979 to 2000 period and has plateaued since then . The rising wage premium to post-secondary education has likely contributed to relatively high wage growth at the top of the distribution, because workers there have greater shares of college-educated workers. Occupational composition of worker groups appears to matter as well and may explain the failure of education alone to raise wages for some groups. The report closes with a brief discussion of three groups of factors—market, institutional, and macroeconomic—that are widely thought to contribute to wage patterns. This section describes trends in real hourly wages over the 1979 to 2017 period at selected wage percentiles for nonmilitary, nonfarm workers between the ages of 25 and 64; wage patterns are disaggregated by sex, race, Hispanic ethnicity, and education. Wage trends for low-, middle-, and high-wage groups are examined by plotting wages at the 10 th , 50 th , and 90 th percentiles of each demographic group's wage distribution over the period of study. Wage trends are examined separately within demographic groups because workers in these groups are not distributed proportionately within the overall wage distribution. A sole focus on the overall wage distribution would therefore mask important differences in wage trends between groups. For example, because workers at the top of the distribution are disproportionately male, white, and, non-Hispanic (see Appendix B ), tracking trends only in the overall distribution provides information mainly for those workers and may miss trends among relatively high-earning workers in other groups. Appendix B provides detailed data on the composition of different parts of the wage distribution in 1979 and 2017. In addition to trends, we present estimated wage levels (i.e., dollars per hour) at various points in time and compare and contrast wages across worker groups. As is always the case, wage estimates are influenced by the methodology used to produce them. For example, we address potential outliers by excluding very high and very low wages from our sample; related studies that do not "trim" their data in this way may achieve different wage estimates at the various percentiles. The methods used in this report are summarized in Appendix A . As noted earlier, data used to analyze wage trends are cross-sectional, meaning that a separate nationally representative sample of workers is used to describe wages in each year. For this reason, trends in this section do not demonstrate wage patterns for a fixed set of workers. Individual workers can and often do move throughout the wage distribution over time, such that a worker at the 50 th percentile in 1980 may be at a higher or lower percentile in subsequent years. Table 1 provides graphic presentations of real hourly wages across different demographic groups from 1979 to 2017. The sample of workers examined includes nonfarm workers ages 25 to 64. Wages at the 90 th percentile increased across demographic groups, ranging from rates of 12.1% (Hispanic workers) to 65.5% (women). Overall, wages at the 90 th percentile increased from an estimated $37.53 to $50.40 (a 34.3% increase) over the 38 years between 1979 and 2017, but the growth rate was not constant. After increasing by $3.07 ($37.53 to $40.60) over the 19 years from 1979 to 1998, wages at the 90 th percentile grew by an estimated $9.80 over the 19 years from 1998 to 2017. Median wage trends were not uniform across demographic groups, with wages decreasing for some groups (e.g., men and Hispanic workers) but increasing for others (e.g., women). Overall, median wages increased from an estimated $20.27 to $21.50 (a 6.1% increase) over the 1979 to 2017 period. Wages at the 10 th percentile followed a similar pattern (i.e., declining for men and Hispanic workers, but rising for other groups). Overall, wages at the 10 th percentile increased in real terms from an estimated $10.81 to $10.94 (a 1.2% increase). To explore how real wage trends evolved over the 1979 to 2017 period, Figure 1 shows annualized wage growth rates over various time periods (roughly a decade each) by wage percentile and demographic group. Considering first wage growth at the 10 th and 50 th percentiles, Figure 1 reveals that the 10 th percentile wage declined in real terms during the 1980s for all groups, and, with the exception of women, the median (50 th percentile) wage declined as well. In the 1990s, 10 th percentile and median wages increased for nearly all demographic groups. This was followed by a slowdown in real wage growth in 2000-2010, after which 10 th percentile wages grew for nearly all demographic groups (with the exception of men), and median wages increased. Real wage growth at the 90 th percentile was positive and increasing over time for all demographic groups excluding black workers and Hispanic workers, for whom the 90 th percentile wage declined slightly during one period, the 1980s. Aggregate trends and overall averages can mask important dynamics within groups. For example, although women in aggregate saw sizable wage gains across the 10 th , 50 th , and 90 th percentiles from 1979 to 2017, the trends and growth rates varied considerably between black and white women and between Hispanic and non-Hispanic women. Similar variation occurs within other demographic groups. Further, comparing rates of change can be misleading because worker groups start (in 1979) at different base wages. For example, women's wage growth over 1979-2017 at the median was 25.5%, compared to a 6% wage loss experienced by men at the median. However, the median wage for women in 2017 was still lower than the male median wage in the same year. This section explores these patterns by disaggregating the major trends in real hourly wages by sex, race, and Hispanic ethnicity; these are presented in Figure 2 , below. The discussion is organized by earner group—low wage (10 th percentile), median wage (50 th percentile), and high wage (90 th percentile). It bears repeating that the data used to analyze wage trends are cross-sectional, and as such do not capture individuals' movements between earner groups (e.g., an individual worker may move from a lower to higher earnings group over time, or vice versa). In general, women in all demographic groups experienced rising wage levels at the 10 th , 50 th , and 90 th percentiles, with the exception of black women and Hispanic women at the 10 th percentile.