Wages may be outpacing inflation, but so have prices for a long time, and wages haven’t reflected increases in productivity since around the 70s or so. In about 2015, I remember looking up some statistics and finding out that wages for the average worker had decreased about 5% since the 70s while CEO compensation had more than doubled, when you account for inflation. The most absurd example I can think of off the top of my head is that, when adjusted for inflation, the cost of a taco from Taco Bell has doubled since the 90s. There’s some great comparisons out there, but some stuff has increased at more than double the rate of inflation since the 80s, with the biggest offender being the cost of college, which has increased by something like 1,153% (if I remember right, it’s been several years since I’ve looked at those statistics).
Plus, local conditions never reflect the national averages/medians, so there are probably areas and industries that are seeing massive booms in wages and work to life balance and such, but there’s others that aren’t and some areas where even booming industries are seeing a decline. The IRS report for 2021 says that 51% of Americans made $15,000 or less that year. During my 20s (around the 2010s), I made $20,000-$30,000 a year working at a local fish market. This would put me probably somewhere around the top 45% of Americans by annual wages comparatively, but due to the high CoL in my hometown, I couldn’t afford to rent a studio apartment. The lowest rent I found in that time was a single room in somebody’s house with “occasional kitchen access” for $1,000 a month. Studio apartments started at $2,000 a month. The average American has something like $20,000 in their bank account, while the median American has $600.
I’m reminded of all the articles I see about people spending their “pandemic savings” where I think to myself, “What savings? The $1,000 check we got that some idiot of a politician said that everybody would be using to go buy a brand new car? 2 years ago they were talking about how we had all gone through the majority of our savings just to keep up with CoL increases.”
Those charts are federal data, and you are correct about the winners of productivity gains. I can tell you why “wages are going up” - many states raised minimum wages from as low as $10/hr to $15, over a period of 3 years. The working poor got raises and are still working poor. Also, these people can’t save their raises. They spend them on basic necessities, so there is a good chunk of economic growth right there. That’s an example of an economic multiplier effect >= 1.0.
Yeah, the “fight for $15” has been going on so long that if minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be more like $24-30 an hour now. Just another example of people twisting the numbers to show the conclusions that they want.
Wages may be outpacing inflation, but so have prices for a long time, and wages haven’t reflected increases in productivity since around the 70s or so. In about 2015, I remember looking up some statistics and finding out that wages for the average worker had decreased about 5% since the 70s while CEO compensation had more than doubled, when you account for inflation. The most absurd example I can think of off the top of my head is that, when adjusted for inflation, the cost of a taco from Taco Bell has doubled since the 90s. There’s some great comparisons out there, but some stuff has increased at more than double the rate of inflation since the 80s, with the biggest offender being the cost of college, which has increased by something like 1,153% (if I remember right, it’s been several years since I’ve looked at those statistics).
Plus, local conditions never reflect the national averages/medians, so there are probably areas and industries that are seeing massive booms in wages and work to life balance and such, but there’s others that aren’t and some areas where even booming industries are seeing a decline. The IRS report for 2021 says that 51% of Americans made $15,000 or less that year. During my 20s (around the 2010s), I made $20,000-$30,000 a year working at a local fish market. This would put me probably somewhere around the top 45% of Americans by annual wages comparatively, but due to the high CoL in my hometown, I couldn’t afford to rent a studio apartment. The lowest rent I found in that time was a single room in somebody’s house with “occasional kitchen access” for $1,000 a month. Studio apartments started at $2,000 a month. The average American has something like $20,000 in their bank account, while the median American has $600.
I’m reminded of all the articles I see about people spending their “pandemic savings” where I think to myself, “What savings? The $1,000 check we got that some idiot of a politician said that everybody would be using to go buy a brand new car? 2 years ago they were talking about how we had all gone through the majority of our savings just to keep up with CoL increases.”
Those charts are federal data, and you are correct about the winners of productivity gains. I can tell you why “wages are going up” - many states raised minimum wages from as low as $10/hr to $15, over a period of 3 years. The working poor got raises and are still working poor. Also, these people can’t save their raises. They spend them on basic necessities, so there is a good chunk of economic growth right there. That’s an example of an economic multiplier effect >= 1.0.
Yeah, the “fight for $15” has been going on so long that if minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be more like $24-30 an hour now. Just another example of people twisting the numbers to show the conclusions that they want.