Neither education nor construction: These are the jobs beating inflation
Wages in the US have been outpacing inflation over the past year, but the growth isn’t uniform across all jobs. Here’s a look at the current job market.
American workers have been experiencing a period of strong real wage growth, once adjusted for inflation, especially those at the lower end of the wage scale reversing a long-term trend. According to research by the Economic Policy Institute, those in the lowest 10% saw wages grow by a stunning 15.3% between 2019 and 2024 outpacing all other groups and twice as much as the median.
Nominal US wages, without adjusting for the rise in the cost of living, grew 0.7 percentage points more than inflation between June 2024 and June 2025 according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. However, the growth in wages hasn’t been uniform across industries or specific jobs.
These are the jobs beating inflation
In its analysis of data from the second quarter of 2025, PayScale, an American company specializing in compensation software and data, found that wage growth had cooled compared to recent quarters across all groups. Nominal growth was 1.8% year-over-year while real wages have stagnated.
That said, with the annual consumer price index up 2.7% in June nominal wage growth in only one industry surpassed that, arts, entertainment and recreation at 3%. PayScale said that this was down to the fact that “this industry has adapted to evolving consumer preferences, capitalizing on evergrowing demand for novel experiences and securing lucrative broadcasting deals in sports entertainment.”
Nominal wages in the construction industry as a whole fell just short of keeping pace with annual inflation with growth of 2.6% according to PayScale data.
On the other hand, thanks to a flourishing of construction jobs in the summer months along with ever-growing demand for seasonal development projects, construction jobs saw the top wage growth in the second quarter of 2025. Nominal wage growth was 3.4%.
Also beating inflation were jobs in transportation as well as media and publishing with nominal wage growth of 3.1% and 3%, respectively.
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