Local 3 News covered wage trends in Chattanooga and asked CRER director and chief economist Howard Wall about his work on the issue:
The average wage in the greater Chattanooga area is increasing, but families say their paychecks still aren’t keeping up with the rising costs of living.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the average pay in the Chattanooga region increased about 4% from May 2024 to May 2025, but it is still slightly lower than national averages.
Chief economist Howard Wall at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga says the mean average wage in Chattanooga jumped to $28.21 per hour, equating to approximately $58,676 annually for an individual working 40 hours a week.
“The average weekly wage is about $1,200 in Chattanooga, but for the U.S., it’s a little closer to over $1,400,” Wall says. “That sounds like a big difference, but part of it is that the wages in the rest of the county are more skewed with more high-wage people, and the other part is that our cost of living is lower.”