In 2022, I did a seven-part series about Bidenomics, focusing on the president’s track record on subsidies, inflation, protectionism, household income, fiscal policy, red tape, and labor-force participation.
Let’s take an updated look at his record on household income.
I’m motivated to address this issue because of a Wall Street Journal editorial featuring this depressing chart showing that inflation-adjusted wages for the average American worker have declined during the Biden presidency.
This is not a happy chart, though at least there’s been some slight improvement over the past 12 months.
Here’s some of the accompanying analysis from the WSJ‘s editorial.
…why are voters so unhappy? The answer can be found in one lesson by looking at the…chart. It tracks average real hourly earnings for all workers in the private economy across the Biden Presidency, and it tells an ugly story about the impact of the worst inflation in 40 years and the standard of living. …In 1982-84 dollars, which takes account of inflation, average hourly earnings were $11.39 when Mr. Biden took office but started to decline immediately and didn’t stop falling until inflation peaked in June 2022. They have bounced up a little but were still back only to $11.03 in May. That’s a 3.16% decline in real earnings for the average worker across the 29 months of the Biden Presidency.
For those who want to dig deeper into this type of data, you can click here for the latest report on “Real Earnings” from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always preferred the “Employment Cost Index” data from BLS, in part because it includes the value of fringe benefits.
If you want to know what’s been happening to inflation-adjusted compensation, here’s a chart from the latest report.
As you can see, the numbers are not great. Compensation has declined during the Biden presidency.
In his defense, though, we were on a downward trajectory when he entered office and the numbers have been moving in the right direction in recent months.
That being said, getting back up to the “0.0” line simply means compensation no longer is dropping. And for workers who want and expect rising living standards, that’s hardly a cause for celebration.
So Biden presumably has a political problem – notwithstanding the spin from folks like Paul Krugman.
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Image credit: Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0.
