The Biden Administration’s robust and durable track record on jobs and unemployment is breaking records, putting up some of the best results we’ve seen in half a century.
The Biden Administration’s robust and durable track record on jobs and unemployment is breaking records, putting up some of the best results we’ve seen in half a century.
Your article is from 2015. Things have changed. Wages are increasing.
Here are more recent articles directly from the EPI, if you’d like to learn more:
These reports discuss state-level minimum wage increases, while pointing out that the federal minimum wage is still stuck at 7.25, same as it’s been since 2009.
The reports you linked do highlight a 9% wage growth between 2019-2022 for the lowest earners. I’m glad that they got that bump, but we’re very generously talking $10/hr here, and that is simply not a living wage in any part of America anymore. When factoring in change over time since the 70s, this is drops in the bucket and wages are still comparatively stagnant vs productivity in that time frame.
Also, this was during a time when companies were absolutely desperate to employ “essential workers” to keep operations going during the pandemic. I’d argue that was a much bigger motivating factor for this meager gains in the lowest wage brackets, and it had little or nothing to do with Biden’s policies.
Ok, so like I said wages are increasing, not stagnating. I never said wages shouldn’t increase even more.
And wages are increasing even now, several years beyond post-pandemic reopening / return to work. So it’s not just due to “essential workers”. Wage increases are helping all types of workers.
Economists generally predicted that the pandemic would spark a recession. If a recession had occurred, unemployment would have skyrocketed and erased any gains made by workers.
But a recession never materialized, partly due to Biden’s economic policies. So Biden’s policies are in part responsible for today’s wage gains.
That’s really interesting you bring this up, I was already thinking about mentioning this factor. The reason a recession never materialized is because the Biden admin literally changed the formula for calculating inflation. Since he took office, real inflation (CPI) has risen anywhere between 15 and 20%.
These cost of living increases are not sustainable for America’s working class, especially considering 40% of Americans cannot afford so much as an emergency $400 expense, as they’re literally working paycheck to paycheck.
I absolutely agree with you - we should keep going with wage increases for all workers, and they this should be incentivized by changes to federal policy. But instead of this, Biden seems to be blind to the realities many Americans are facing. So much so, that instead of addressing the recession head-on his admin simply changed the formula for how we calculate it so that we didn’t technically have one per the new formula. This isn’t helping the working class, it’s covering for irresponsible business practices of the ruling class (the corporate oligarchy), and that’s a huge problem that isn’t being addressed in any meaningful way. Do this, and we will see some real benefits to the workers, like what is happening thanks to organized labor efforts such as UAW pushing back on corporations trying to pay bottom dollar.
A recession is not affected by the formula for inflation. In fact, there have been recessions with high inflation (the 1980 recession) and recessions with low inflation (the 2007 recession). There have even been recessions with negative inflation (the Great Depression).
A recession occurs when the total income of a country decreases. This leads to a vicious cycle of less spending, which causes more unemployment, which causes further decreases in total income.
Inflation measures change in prices, not income. When incomes increase along with prices, there is no vicious cycle and no recession. And as we know, incomes are increasing.
Yes, increasing prices are bad. But increasing unemployment is far worse, especially if you want to advance the rights of workers. And unemployment is the bullet that Biden helped us dodge.