https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
Is the article talking about something different? Would you say they're incorrect? Is their data old? Etc.
To me it seems they're arguing real wages haven't increased that much in the last 40 years.
Also I just want to point out, that the very end of your article about wages increasing for low-wage workers, says:
"That's not to say that low-paid workers have it easy. According to the Tax Policy Center, the bottom 20% of households are earning typical annual income of about $13,300. By comparison, the top 20% of U.S. households earn about $221,000 annually, or nearly 17 times more than the lowest quintile."
My interpretation is, who cares if there's a 50% wage increase from $10/hr to $15/hr if neither of those is a decent living wage to begin with, and the folks at the top of the pyramid are just making staggering amounts of money? The top 20% averages $220K, the top 1% ... much much more.
Which is a bit off-topic, but, at the end of the day economics itself is about people, otherwise there'd be no point! : )
It's probably a combination of a couple things.
1) the article's editorializing of the data doesn't match up with the actual raw data -> https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N. This raw FRED data is basically as close to the "primary source" as you can get with this sort of thing.
2) the article looks at total benefits costs and compares them with total wages and salaries, which should set off a couple alarm bells: in the US total compensation is what we need to look at. Basically, they're double counting healthcare costs by ignoring the fact that employers pay the majority of premium costs (https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2019-section-6-worke...), while also counting the full cost of those benefits against the after-wage dollar amounts. In other words, we've all been receiving huge phantom raises, and we just don't know it because it doesn't show up in our bank accounts.
3) They don't take into account taxes and transfers, which median earners broadly enjoy. To give you a sense, here's what the median disposable income looks like after taxes & transfers, by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
> My interpretation is, who cares if there's a 50% wage increase from $10/hr to $15/hr if neither of those is a decent living wage to begin with, and the folks at the top of the pyramid are just making staggering amounts of money?
Because that 50% wage increase from $10/hr to $15/hr tells us very little about a single earner's pay history — it presupposes that a single person stays at that level for the entirety of their life (which we know not to be true). Those numbers show us the snapshot-in-time income numbers for everyone currently at that salary level, but does not account for people actually moving income levels as they progress in their career. The data isn't "here's the life of Joe over the last 5 years", it's "here's the life of people without college degrees that are X years old with Y years of experience with X & Y held constant over 5 years". I suppose "the lowest quintile wage has modestly increased over time" has a different ring to it than "the entry level starting salary has modestly increased over time".
Also, this is a bit more debatable, but one can also argue if it really matters if the people at the top are making staggering amounts of money, if people in the middle tier (again, not a static group) are also doing better, despite being of (predominately) lower skill — especially since that staggering increase at the top doesn't happen in a vacuum, it's because our system rewards those who play an outsized role in providing goods & services that increase our collective standards of living.
> The data isn't "here's the life of Joe over the last 5 years", it's "here's the life of people without college degrees that are X years old with Y years of experience with X & Y held constant over 5 years"
That's an excellent point. I think that, for various reasons, I've been generalizing more in our discussion and you have been making much more specific and limited claims. One reason I've been generalizing is that I don't know a lot about this stuff : ).
I guess my natural next question is, why do young people (to generalize) feel screwed over by our current economy?
> I guess my natural next question is, why do young people (to generalize) feel screwed over by our current economy?
If I were to guess, it's probably because young people have experienced now not 1, but 2 major crises in their lifetime (2008, 2020).
Young people also have congregated to some of the most expensive metros in the US, and those localities have done a terrible job building enough housing to keep up with demand.
I think the collective angst is justified, but needs to be contextualized so that we don't prescribe the wrong solutions.
This is correct, but no matter how you look at it, the data tells largely the same story.
Maybe you think that the median paints an insufficient picture or you want to consider all quintiles including the bottom 2 -> https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser... — there's been a real increase across all 5 quintiles, adjusted for inflation.
Maybe you think that this doesn't account for housing/healthcare/education. But no matter which inflation index you use (each put different weights to housing, medical costs, education, etc), the adjusted median personal income is up. (And YES, this all accounts for all those things -> https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200)
Maybe you think this is attributable to dual-income households. But when you ignore those and focus on single-income households, it's still up, and higher than boomer counterparts -> https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1308775197311467520
Maybe you think this is attributable to working more hours instead of actual wage increases. But hours worked is actually decreasing -> https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG
Maybe this is all well and good, but the lower wages have stagnated, and that's what we should be talking about...except that has also not been true in the 2010's -> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/low-wage-workers-are-getting-bi...
After a certain point, it's worth reflecting on whether you're imposing new constraints / explanations on the data for the sake of intellectual curiosity, or just because you really don't want to revisit prior conclusions.
> But, speaking of data, is the guy who's tweets you referenced - Ernie Tedeschi, a reliable source? What are his general biases?
He's a policy economist https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernie-tedeschi-74ba48b/ who's worked for the US Treasury, who's focus is labor markets. His biases are no different from Piketty, Saez, or Zucman, who also have biases. What's more important is what to make of the data they cite.