• disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Portfolios, not bank balances, but otherwise that’s what economy means to capitalists. The economic hardship index is what we all actually care about, but that’s never on the news.

    • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Economist here. There’s obviously no single measure of the state of the economy, and if there were, jobs and wages would clearly be a key component. It’s mostly those “left-wing” journalist that will have you believe that one number, GDP growth, represents the state of the economy.

  • booly@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    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.

    • medgremlin@midwest.social
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      3 months ago

      The problem with looking at “average wages” is that you’ve got outliers like “Spiders” Elon over there fucking up the numbers.

    • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • booly@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        The net economic power of workers went down.

        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.

        • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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          3 months ago

          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.

    • blaggle42@lemmy.today
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      3 months ago

      t 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.

      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

      • booly@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        All of these stats matter, because it shows multiple facets of a complex economic system.

        Bottom quartile earnings are here.

        Real Median Personal Income

        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.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      These sentences:

      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.

      answer the implicit question in this sentence:

      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.

      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.

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 months ago

          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.