Seattle wages after inflation, August 2026
Private-sector workers in the Seattle metro averaged $48.08 an hour in August 2026. Adjusted for inflation that is $48.08 in today’s money, up 2.4% from a year earlier.
The two lines are the post. Nominal pay in this region has gone up almost every month for fifteen years, which is the number that gets announced; whether it bought more is a different question, and between 2021 and 2023 the answer was no. The real series peaked at $52.53 in February 2019.
An average, not a median, so it is pulled upward by high earners — this is a metro where that matters more than most. It also moves with who is working: a month that sheds low-wage jobs raises the average without raising anyone’s pay, which is much of what happened in 2020.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics, average hourly earnings of all private employees, Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue MSA, via FRED; real series deflated by CPI-U to the latest available period. Auto-generated each build.