Prehn Hours of Work Index
In 2000 a worker on the average hourly wage could buy a fixed basket, a tenth of the S&P 500, an ounce of gold and a slice of the median new house, with 100 hours of work. In August 2026 the same basket cost 341 hours, up 20.3% on a year earlier. The record is 366.1, set in February 2026.
What it measures
Dollars change in value; an hour of work does not. Pricing assets in hours shows whether the things people save for are moving closer or further out of reach of someone who earns a wage.1 The wage used is that of production and nonsupervisory employees, about four in five private-sector workers, $32.53 an hour in August 2026. A reading of 200 means twice the work of 2000; 50 means half. The index is a price, not a forecast or a valuation.
By year
| Year (average) | Hourly wage | Stocks, hours per tenth of S&P 500 | Gold, hours per ounce | House, years of work | Index (2000 = 100) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 | $2.54 | 3.2 | 13.8 | 3.7 | 54.2 |
| 1970 | $3.40 | 2.4 | 10.5 | 3.5 | 44.7 |
| 1975 | $4.74 | 1.8 | 34.0 | 4.1 | 85.5 |
| 1980 | $6.85 | 1.7 | 88.8 | 4.7 | 179.6 |
| 1985 | $8.73 | 2.1 | 36.4 | 4.8 | 94.3 |
| 1990 | $10.20 | 3.3 | 38.0 | 6.0 | 107.2 |
| 1995 | $11.65 | 4.6 | 33.2 | 5.7 | 102.2 |
| 2000 | $14.01 | 10.2 | 20.1 | 6.0 | 100.0 |
| 2005 | $16.11 | 7.5 | 27.7 | 7.3 | 111.5 |
| 2010 | $19.05 | 6.0 | 64.4 | 5.8 | 159.0 |
| 2015 | $21.03 | 9.8 | 55.2 | 7.0 | 162.7 |
| 2019 | $23.51 | 12.4 | 59.4 | 6.8 | 177.1 |
| 2020 | $24.68 | 13.0 | 71.9 | 6.7 | 199.2 |
| 2021 | $25.91 | 16.5 | 69.5 | 7.4 | 210.4 |
| 2022 | $27.56 | 14.9 | 65.6 | 7.8 | 201.3 |
| 2023 | $28.92 | 14.8 | 67.6 | 7.4 | 201.8 |
| 2024 | $30.12 | 18.0 | 79.7 | 7.0 | 230.0 |
| 2025 | $31.34 | 19.8 | 110.3 | 6.6 | 284.9 |
| 2026* | $32.25 | 22.3 | 142.5 | 6.4 | 345.0 |
* Year to date. Full monthly series from January 1964 in the CSV.
Use the data
Free to quote, chart and republish with credit to The Prehn Institute. Updated the morning the BLS jobs report is published.
Download
Monthly CSV, 1964 to August 2026 Summary JSON
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Ready-to-use sentence
According to The Prehn Institute's Prehn Hours of Work Index, an American production worker in August 2026 needed 341 hours of work to buy the basket of stocks, gold and housing that cost 100 hours in 2000. A tenth of the S&P 500 cost 23.7 hours of work, an ounce of gold 137.4 hours and the median new house 6.3 years of full-time pay.
Citation
The Prehn Institute, Prehn Hours of Work Index, August 2026 release, https://prehninstitute.com/indices/hours-of-work-index. Underlying data: US Bureau of Labor Statistics (AHETPI) and US Census Bureau (MSPUS) via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; S&P 500 and gold prices via Financial Modeling Prep.
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Release alerts
One email per release, on jobs-report morning, with the new number, chart and CSV.
| Next releases | Data month |
|---|---|
| 2 October 2026 | September 2026 |
| 6 November 2026 | October 2026 |
| 4 December 2026 | November 2026 |
8:30 am Eastern, following the BLS Employment Situation calendar.
Method
Wage. Average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, total private, BLS, monthly, seasonally adjusted.2 Available since 1964, which sets the start of the index.
Stocks. S&P 500, monthly average of daily closes from 1990;4 before 1990 the monthly-average S&P Composite from Robert Shiller's long series, which is the same index.5 Divided by ten so a unit is close to one share of the large funds that track it. Dividends excluded: the index measures the price of buying in, not the return from holding.
Gold. US dollars per troy ounce. Front-month futures, monthly average of daily closes, from 1990;4 before 1990, monthly London prices.6 The two series differ by under 1% in overlapping months.
House. Median sales price of new houses sold, Census Bureau and HUD, quarterly, carried forward within the quarter.3 Years of work divide hours by 2,000. New houses are used because the series is public, long and rarely revised; the existing-home median is not freely redistributable.
Basket and index. Hours of work = price divided by hourly wage. Quantities fixed so each asset cost 33.3 hours in the 2000 average: 3.2719 tenths of the S&P 500, 1.6604 ounces of gold, 0.2787% of a median new house. The index is the hours needed for that basket, so 2000 = 100. Quantities are not rebalanced (a Laspeyres index in labour units). Component indices set each asset's own hours to 100 in 2000.
Revisions. BLS revises wages for two months after first release and in annual benchmarks. The whole history is recalculated from source each month; the CSV carries the calculation date.
Not covered. Taxes, dividends, rent saved by owning, mortgage rates, and the size and quality of houses, which have grown since 1964. One national wage is used.
Calculation code (build_hours_index.py) is published with the data. Index values and charts: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
- The approach follows the literature on asset-price redistribution between savers and wage earners, e.g. Fagereng, Gomez, Gouin-Bonenfant, Holm, Moll and Natvik, Asset-Price Redistribution (2024).
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED, series AHETPI, fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI. Latest 2026-08, $32.53.
- US Census Bureau and HUD via FRED, series MSPUS, fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS. Latest 2026-04 (quarter), $410,700.
- Financial Modeling Prep, daily closes of the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and gold futures (GCUSD), financialmodelingprep.com; monthly averages by The Prehn Institute.
- Robert J. Shiller, US stock market data 1871 to present, Yale University, econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm (ie_data.xls, monthly average S&P Composite price).
- Datahub "Gold prices" dataset, monthly, from LBMA and Deutsche Bundesbank records, datahub.io/core/gold-prices.
Compiled by Felix Nikolas Prehn, economist and former investment banker, founder of The Prehn Institute. United Kingdom and Canada editions are in preparation. · prehninstitute.com