Sharp and sustained economic criticism from Biden's ostensible allies established a narrative of failure that has proved alarmingly resistant to reality.
You’re ignoring previous inflation. Again. Wages beat inflation just this year. They are not higher relative to inflation over the last few years. They are certainly not higher relative to the wage-production split in the1970’s.
Since the beginning of 2020 wages are down from inflation by seven points. And this is after decades of losing ground. Weasel wording the numbers from 2023 where wages beat inflation by 1 percent to gaslight people is disgusting.
Inflation-adjusted wages grew by 6% in 2020, 8% in 2021, and 6% in 2022. Here’s the citation. Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale – inflation-adjusted wages for the top 10% of earners actually fell by 5% from 2020-2022, meaning for the average to rise, quite a few of people in the lower percentiles saw their wages go up.
I suspect that a lot of the Lemmy community is tech people in that top 10%, which makes the anecdotal “IDK things are bad for me and my friends” resonate with them. And fair play if you want to say that’s a problem, I won’t say it’s not.
But it seems like you’re just trying to create a narrative that wages for everyone have gone down, because of stacked year-on-year inflation, that simply doesn’t exist anywhere in the data, even in any given year in isolation. What are you saying was the change in wages that justifies what you’re saying? Where are you getting your actual numbers and what are they?
This is Business Insider. You really need to check the sources. And the OECD chart they linked does not show what they claim. OECD has a table for real wage growth. It’s not nearly as fun to read.
That’s their old site, they have a new one that works better now.
I’m not completely sure, but that looks to me like those are two different ways of measuring average income per person who’s already full-time employed. Reducing unemployment won’t have an impact on that number, nor will getting someone from a barely-scraping part time position into a higher-paying full time position (in fact the latter will actually bring that metric down, if the new position makes less than like $70k in 2024 dollars).
2020: $50,024 (Covid takes wages down even with stimulus)
2021: $53,417 (+6.7%)
2022: $54,274 (+1.6%)
So, substantial growth of income overall, even after adjusting for cost of living. I don’t know if those are the exact numbers BI used (seems like not) or what the numbers after 2022 look like, but this so far seems very consistent to me with the economic outlook getting better for people at the bottom, back to and better than pre-Covid, and offset partially but not completely by some wage loss for the people at the top. If you can find some more recent ones or ones that tell a different story, I’d be happy to look at them though.
Well substantial growth in Average terms at least. Per Capita is the literal Average, total divided by population. Which is why we talk about medians and modes. Now finding a mode is hilarious, much less for each year. But median is actually pretty available. When even the Fed can’t make the line go up, you know there’s a problem.
Why do you want to use household / family income instead of individual income? Median personal income in constant dollars is independent of any confounding factors and doesn’t show the same drop; it shows no change at all.
And yes, I could see this being consistent with what I was talking about. I actually already sent you data points (the link text is “fell by 5%”) showing the 10th, 50th (i.e. median), and 90th percentiles, which showed -1% change in real income at the 50th percentile. The census bureau numbers show +0.01% instead at the 50th percentile, but pretty similar.
All of that is consistent with a boost for the lowest earners, which is what I’ve been saying this entire time. “Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale” is how I phrased it.
Because until that data says IRS, it’s far easier to collect household income, and far more applicable to things like rent and grocery costs. It doesn’t matter if one person’s income goes up, if the household income has gone down.
Wrong. If wages have grown relative to inflation, then it’s gotten easier.
Right?
You’re ignoring previous inflation. Again. Wages beat inflation just this year. They are not higher relative to inflation over the last few years. They are certainly not higher relative to the wage-production split in the1970’s.
Since the beginning of 2020 wages are down from inflation by seven points. And this is after decades of losing ground. Weasel wording the numbers from 2023 where wages beat inflation by 1 percent to gaslight people is disgusting.
Inflation-adjusted wages grew by 6% in 2020, 8% in 2021, and 6% in 2022. Here’s the citation. Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale – inflation-adjusted wages for the top 10% of earners actually fell by 5% from 2020-2022, meaning for the average to rise, quite a few of people in the lower percentiles saw their wages go up.
I suspect that a lot of the Lemmy community is tech people in that top 10%, which makes the anecdotal “IDK things are bad for me and my friends” resonate with them. And fair play if you want to say that’s a problem, I won’t say it’s not.
But it seems like you’re just trying to create a narrative that wages for everyone have gone down, because of stacked year-on-year inflation, that simply doesn’t exist anywhere in the data, even in any given year in isolation. What are you saying was the change in wages that justifies what you’re saying? Where are you getting your actual numbers and what are they?
This is Business Insider. You really need to check the sources. And the OECD chart they linked does not show what they claim. OECD has a table for real wage growth. It’s not nearly as fun to read.
OECD: Annual average wage growth
OECD: Table N2. Real wage growth of average gross annual wages per full-time equivalent employee
Now those do stop in 2022, which also makes BI’s assertion in 2024 kind of suspect.
I think what you want to look at is something like Per capita income, inflation adjusted on the new site. It shows (in constant 2015 dollars):
So, substantial growth of income overall, even after adjusting for cost of living. I don’t know if those are the exact numbers BI used (seems like not) or what the numbers after 2022 look like, but this so far seems very consistent to me with the economic outlook getting better for people at the bottom, back to and better than pre-Covid, and offset partially but not completely by some wage loss for the people at the top. If you can find some more recent ones or ones that tell a different story, I’d be happy to look at them though.
Well substantial growth in Average terms at least. Per Capita is the literal Average, total divided by population. Which is why we talk about medians and modes. Now finding a mode is hilarious, much less for each year. But median is actually pretty available. When even the Fed can’t make the line go up, you know there’s a problem.
Here’s the Fed showing a 15 percent gap in inflation and wages up to 2022. Median Income / Inflation Consumer Price
Why do you want to use household / family income instead of individual income? Median personal income in constant dollars is independent of any confounding factors and doesn’t show the same drop; it shows no change at all.
And yes, I could see this being consistent with what I was talking about. I actually already sent you data points (the link text is “fell by 5%”) showing the 10th, 50th (i.e. median), and 90th percentiles, which showed -1% change in real income at the 50th percentile. The census bureau numbers show +0.01% instead at the 50th percentile, but pretty similar.
All of that is consistent with a boost for the lowest earners, which is what I’ve been saying this entire time. “Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale” is how I phrased it.
Because until that data says IRS, it’s far easier to collect household income, and far more applicable to things like rent and grocery costs. It doesn’t matter if one person’s income goes up, if the household income has gone down.
…
I’m comfortable ending the conversation here