Nominal and real wages
Nominal wages are not adjusted for inflation and are said to be expressed in terms of "current dollars" (since they are measured in terms of the value of the dollar at that particular time). Real wages are wages that have been adjusted to take into account the effect of inflation. Real wages are expressed in terms of dollars from a given base year and are said to be expressed in "constant dollars." Some form of price index is used to convert nominal wages into real wages. A price index is constructed using the following formula:
The real price of an item is measured as:
In general, economists assume that individual workers and firms respond to changes in real wages and not nominal wages. Workers are concerned with the purchasing power of their wage over time, not just the number of dollars they receive. For this reason, whenever we refer to wages in the future, we will mean the real wage unless the nominal wage is specifically mentioned.
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