By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is the third part of our 2021 wage series. In this article, we take a look at recent contract settlements and examine how those trends vary from recent previous years. Our view of 2019 and 2020 settlements and what we have so far from 2021 indicates that the Washington State public sector wages dropped in 2021 but not as substantially as employers might suggest. We see some wage increases with little substantial “real wage” growth (as measured once controlled for inflation). Whether a growing economy eventually will accelerate these is something we’ll discuss later in this series.
In 
