README

This repository produces the data for the EPI Productivity-Pay Gap page, which also explains the methodology and provides a link to download the data.

The productivity-pay gap data is also available on the State of Working America Data Library.

You can use this repository to reproduce the data from scratch.

Development environment

Packages

You will need R and all of the packages in packages.R

• Some package versions must match the versions specified in _targets.R
• In particular you should use the latest price indices in the realtalk package.

Environment variables

• BLS_DOWNLOAD_EMAIL email valid for BLS downloads
• BLS and BEA API keys set, respectively, in BLS_API_KEYand BEA_API_KEY.

Reproducing and deploying the data

• Set the api_download_date variable to the current date.

• tar_make(): will produce all of the data in 3 .csv files

  • epi_productivity_pay_gap.csv : all series, long format
  • epi_productivity_pay_gap_web.csv : web ready, pay and productivity series indexed to 1948q1
  • epi_productivity_pay_gap_web_stats.csv : relevant statistics for website

Output

Intermediate

• bea_api_output.csv: API results from BEA
• bls_api_output.csv: API results from BLS
• bls_hours.csv: CSV version of BLS total economy hours
• bls_pay.csv: combined BLS early and later wage series
• prices.csv: price indices

Release

• epi_productivity_pay_gap.csv: all annual and quarterly data in long format
• epi_productivity_pay_gap_web.csv: EPI Productivity-Pay Gap web page ready data in wide format, rounded to one decimal place
• epi_productivity_pay_gap_web_stats.csv: miscellanous stats based on web-ready data

Sources

Productivity

• Total hours (BLS)
• Net domestic product (Bureau of Economic Analysis, NIPA table 1.7.5, via BEA API)

Pay

• Average hourly wages for production/nonsupervisory workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics, series CES0500000008, CES0500000008, via BLS API)
• Average hourly wages for production workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics, series EEU00500006, via BLS API)
• Total compensation (Bureau of Economic Analysis, NIPA table 2.1, line 2, via BEA API)
• Wages (Bureau of Economic Analysis, NIPA table 2.1, line 3, via BEA API)