This article made a prediction that turned out to be wrong.
In the time since the headline in July 2020, the number of jobs in the U.S. rose back from 139 million to 159 million. (In January 2020, before COVID hit, there were 152 million jobs).
That doesn’t sound like a good run at all, that sounds like a less terrible run than other terrible runs. Literally wages did not keep up with inflation. The net economic power of workers went down. That’s not a good run.
The aggregate economic power of workers went up, because the actual number of workers went up by 20 million, or 14% of the workforce as of July 2020, and the number of unemployed or involuntarily part time went down over that period of time. There were a lot more wages being distributed per unit population, even if the real wages slightly decreased per worker.
I mis-spoke by saying “net economic power of workers” instead of “economic conditions for the average individual worker”. I have a feeling you understood what I meant anyway: People are hurting more and more.
I don’t like using personal income as a metric that represents what’s happening to regular people because it’s noisy data that incorporates retirement income and investment income in the numerator, and includes in the denominator non-earners (including the idle rich, retired people, full time students).
But as part of a broader look at multiple metrics, it should be considered.
Others include the different categories of unemployment (including the underemployed, the weekly hours worked, marginally detached), read with other employment indicators like layoffs and volunary quits, job openings posted, people making unemployment claims for the first time, etc.
Think it might be grading on a curve. Wages have long lagged inflation. Lagging less than 2 percent over 5 years is bad, but less bad than most 5 year periods in recent history.
Yeah and if wages were already significantly worse than inflation, and continued to stay below it, then peoples buying power decreased even more. It didn’t decrease faster than it was, but it still decreased from what it had been, making them worse off. Looking at 5 year trends foesnt really matter if theres never a true upward swing and its just a consistent downslide. You can say ‘yeah but here in this spot you slowed down slightly’, but the person is still closer to the bottom than they’ve ever been.
This article made a prediction that turned out to be wrong.
In the time since the headline in July 2020, the number of jobs in the U.S. rose back from 139 million to 159 million. (In January 2020, before COVID hit, there were 152 million jobs).
Average weekly earnings went up from $1016 to $1236, a 21.6% increase. That’s come up short on the 23.4% inflation in that time period. But also, this number didn’t drop for COVID, so these wages are higher than in 2019.
People can complain about how the economy isn’t working for regular people, but the last 5 years were actually a pretty good run for wage earners.
That doesn’t sound like a good run at all, that sounds like a less terrible run than other terrible runs. Literally wages did not keep up with inflation. The net economic power of workers went down. That’s not a good run.
The aggregate economic power of workers went up, because the actual number of workers went up by 20 million, or 14% of the workforce as of July 2020, and the number of unemployed or involuntarily part time went down over that period of time. There were a lot more wages being distributed per unit population, even if the real wages slightly decreased per worker.
I mis-spoke by saying “net economic power of workers” instead of “economic conditions for the average individual worker”. I have a feeling you understood what I meant anyway: People are hurting more and more.
The problem with looking at “average wages” is that you’ve got outliers like “Spiders” Elon over there fucking up the numbers.
Generally averages, in my opinion, are not a good measure.
Here is the median:
Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Edit: Maybe this is even better:
Real Median Personal Income in the United States (MEPAINUSA672N) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
All of these stats matter, because it shows multiple facets of a complex economic system.
Bottom quartile earnings are here.
I don’t like using personal income as a metric that represents what’s happening to regular people because it’s noisy data that incorporates retirement income and investment income in the numerator, and includes in the denominator non-earners (including the idle rich, retired people, full time students).
But as part of a broader look at multiple metrics, it should be considered.
Others include the different categories of unemployment (including the underemployed, the weekly hours worked, marginally detached), read with other employment indicators like layoffs and volunary quits, job openings posted, people making unemployment claims for the first time, etc.
These sentences:
answer the implicit question in this sentence:
It wasn’t really a good run. Wages didn’t keep up with inflation. Even though wages are higher, the buying power with those wages is less.
Think it might be grading on a curve. Wages have long lagged inflation. Lagging less than 2 percent over 5 years is bad, but less bad than most 5 year periods in recent history.
Yeah and if wages were already significantly worse than inflation, and continued to stay below it, then peoples buying power decreased even more. It didn’t decrease faster than it was, but it still decreased from what it had been, making them worse off. Looking at 5 year trends foesnt really matter if theres never a true upward swing and its just a consistent downslide. You can say ‘yeah but here in this spot you slowed down slightly’, but the person is still closer to the bottom than they’ve ever been.