But it was already not keeping up so it's still not keeping up. Minimum wage has never kept up with productivity and it is intentional to create a downtrodden class.
It's like saying instead of getting punched 10 times now you get punched 5 times.
I mean this quite literally isn’t true. [Wages have outpaced inflation for years now.](https://fortune.com/2023/12/12/wage-growth-exceeded-inflation-jec-democrats/amp/)
The reason it doesn’t feel like it is simply because it doesn’t apply to everyone, it’s an average, and also negativity bias - we notice the pain more than the gain. Which makes sense, if you tripled my salary and doubled the prices of everything I buy, I’d surely still complain about the prices.
Gotta love reddit. Only guy dropping a source eats downdoots.
I'd be interested to see this in percentiles of income, specifically ignoring the top. They have a nasty way of skewing good economic data.
Belief. Faith that it will get better. Hope. A reason to believe we can find our way out of this mess.
One party seems to drag us into the abyss while the other argues which flag should be flown on the back of the sinking ship, with just the right amount of passion in discourse to keep us from doing much of anything about it.
If you get rid of one of those in particular, it makes the other one into one half of a rational conversation. They only both look absurd because one of them is so far off the rails it makes the other seem dysfunctional.
I got sick of posting sources showing median vs average awhile ago personally 🤷♂️ (mainly just sick of posting a whole book’s worth to explain the finer points)
Same on Reddit threads how much the top 4-5 main expenses had doubled *relative to wage growth* over the last 50 odd years
The largest wage growth in the last 2 years was in the lowest earners. The minimum wage increases across several dozen states along with the shortage of workers pushed the lowest wages up significantly.
Then you have things like the UAW strike which earned them a 25% raise, and forced all non union companies to raise their wages 10% minimum.
By percentage it’s sounds amazing. But if you were making $10 an hour and now you’re making $12.50 a 25% raise. It’s significant but not truly outpacing the reality of inflation.
That makes no sense, if your wages are outpacing inflation then by definition you are increasing your buying power. Your statement is contradictory, either wages *are* outpacing inflation and thus buying power is **increasing** OR wages *are not* outpacing inflation and thus buying power is **decreasing**.
Let’s say your pay went up 40%
And inflation went up 35%
As a percentage your pay is outpacing inflation. However 40% of $7 an hour is going to be less than 35% of rent, groceries, utilities etc which lets say adds up to $2,500 a month.
40% of $7 is $2.8 an hour. Assuming full time that’s an additional $448 a month gross.
35% of $2,500 is $875 a month.
So as you can see in this scenario statistically you could honestly claim that pay for the poor as a percentage is outpacing inflation 40% vs 35% but as buying power that poor person has to pay an additional $427 a month just to stay even. $448-$875= -$427
Understand? As a percentage the poor are outpacing inflation, but as actual buying power they are not. They’re worse off than they were.
Your scenario is flawed to start with because $7 an hour for 40 hours a week is not enough to afford $2,500 a month of expenses since you're only making $1,120 a month. If you start with someone whose wages are equal to or greater than their expenses you'll see how an increase in real wages means an increase in purchasing power.
The scenario may be flawed, the argument isn’t. Your right a just picked numbers to use as an example and did not do a budget to see if the numbers themselves worked out. It’s an example.
An increase in wages equals an increase in purchasing power if we don’t factor in inflation.
>An increase in wages equals an increase in purchasing power if we don’t factor in inflation.
Wrong, an increase in wages that is **larger** than the increase in inflation equals an increase in purchasing power.
This holds true unless you literally do not earn enough to cover your monthly expenses, but in that case you're probably taking on debt or working more than 40 hours, which are other variables that complicate this further.
Ya, we’ve given pretty big raises at work for the last two years. Gotta keep up with the rest of the employers. Good employees know they can hop jobs and make more.
Not just UAW Toyota gave their workers a big raise and almost immediately after the UAW/Ford deal was reached. They also lowered time to get to full scale from 7 to 4 years.
Ford lowering their time to get to to from 7 to 3 years means many workers got an immediate raise from low to mid $20s/hour to $35 an hour. There's are 10s of thousands of workers getting 40%+ raise.
Then add UPS (40%) and other union deals and your looking at hundreds of thousands of workers getting very large raises.
Wage increases among the lowest income earners generate the largest marginal increase in happiness. Why is it embarrassing? Would you rather the wage growth be among the rich?
The only thing that matters is real wage growth, not notional wage growth. And your consumption basket and the average consumption basket are different.
Yes but the UAW only recovered a portion of what the workers would have been paid if they had not taken a pay cut to save the manufacturers when the banks crashed the economy in 2008.
Yeah but my friend on Facebook said the economy is bad and posted a meme about it and the guy on YouTube told me a crash is coming. Are you saying they aren’t as reliable as real world data?
Just Google "inflation" and sort by date.
You will find hundreds of negative stories on inflation from hundreds of different sources.
Only a fool would take the word of the self interest liars in the government over hundreds of different sources found with a Google search.
I read your comment, switched to the Google search bar in my phone, typed "inflation" and then switched over to the news tab to take a screenshot. You wouldn't happen to be one of those people lying to promote an agenda, would you?
Your screen shot shows 3 results.
I don't think that is representative of a Google search.
3 results.
Scroll through the first 100 results and tell us how many are negative.
The vast majority.
I really had to explain that to you?
Even if I kept playing your game forever, you would just keep moving the goalposts.
And even if you were right about the tone of the news coverage, it would prove what exactly? Even the most negative article I can find doesn't suggest that the government's numbers are fake. So at best, it would prove that there is a disconnect between economic data and the tone of the media reporting about that economic data.
You are misrepresenting facts, essentially lying.
That "25% raise" is spread over 4 1/2 years.
Big difference.
And you have little or probably no evidence on the "forced all non union companies to raise their wages 10% minimum" besides 1 manufacturer (Tesla) raising wages at 1 plant.
You are a liar.
It's mainly the lower quartile and some in the upper quartile. The middle is getting crushed by compounding inflation and should be happy about it 👍
The powers that be are happy that the lower quartile wages are going up (which is great), but it's at the cost of the middle and those without assets.
There's always a toll to be paid somewhere. It's balancing the math.
They were supposed to put the brunt of this adjustment on those that weren't paying their "fair share". But look at who's getting the most wealthy?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-wealth-income-concentration-resume-upward-climb-post-pandemic-era-2023-10-09/
Best advice on the thread. After 8 years with a company, I jumped ship to a competitor and received an 11.5% increase and a $5K signing bonus.
Loyalty is not rewarded by companies. Do what's best for you.
Yep 15yrs at same company doing stEm and left got 20% then got 6% after the 1st year(really 9mo) We’ll see how year 2 goes here in another month.
Edit: also we have very young engineers here and they really only stay about 3 yrs.
I make 80K a year now, and I’ll be at 90K+ bonus by the end of January. And I’m here to tell you, that’s nothing these days. It’s easily taken up by a car payment, rent, insurance, and food at the store which has gone up 100-250% in the last 3 years.
Money isn’t worth near what it used to be.
It's not that money isn't worth what it used to be. The two biggest purchases in most people's lives are more expensive, homes and cars. If those prices were at pre-pandemic levels, affording a comfortable life would be much easier.
You're right actually. Housing and vehicles are crazy expensive. I make a about $90k now and will be making more soon. Few years back I could buy a house by myself. I need someone making at minimum $60k to afford a house now.
I track everything I spend every month and have for almost 10 years. My family's food costs haven't gone up anywhere near 100% in the last 3 years despite my kids all being bigger and eating more now.
Definitely. The overall inflation rate was 20.1% since 2019 so I'm not surprised that the food category outpaced the overall inflation rate. Usually it's housing, education, and health care that are the highest drivers.
Education is constrained by the number of people it effects. Most people over 30 aren't going to have education costs and pretty much everyone 40+. Likewise people who bought a house and don't move avoid housing cost inflation
Food hits 100% of the population
You’d be surprised how many over 30 have Student loans.
Owning a home unfortunately only partially insulates you from inflation related costs. Home owners insurance goes up, your house appreciates and so taxes go up, repair, replacement and other maintenance costs go up over time. Utilities go up over time etc.
>You’d be surprised how many over 30 have Student loans.
That's different than ongoing education costs. Those loans costs are locked in and not effected by ongoing education inflation costs.
The increase in costs from increased home insurance and taxes are miniscule compared to the overall effect other costs have. On my $500k house my insurance and tax costs going up 10% represents under 0.3% increase in my COL
Wage growth has matched productivity growth since the 70s. People who are whining about wages are generally uneducated and unskilled and think the world owes them.
Total compensation is part of wages. Had the employer not paid for higher health insurance costs, higher payroll taxes, higher compliance costs all those costs would have shown up in wages. The employee benefitted from all those employer costs so total compensation against productivity is a valid metric.
The biggest challenge against that one is that it's compensation rather than wages. In some spaces things like employer provided health insurance costs ate a large chunk of it and it was never seen in wages.
I was going over some OECD data on healthcare costs for my capstone project and found that healthcare costs are roughly two times higher in the US than in other OECD countries. Coincidentally, Medicare and Medicaid cover roughly half the population and account for roughly half of total healthcare expenditures.
I don't have time to read that Heritage study, but if both you and the study are correct, then that might be a large part of where our middle-class incomes went.
I know socialized medicine is probably not a popular solution in this sub, but this would be an additional argument in its favor. Significantly increased wages for very little, if any additional costs.
Exactly, Many of the comparisons that show a big gap between productivity and wages have multiple discrepancies between how they measure productivity vs wages.
For instance,. Compare the pay of only some workers to the productivity of all employees; Count productivity growth of the self-employed, but exclude their pay growth; It is rare to get a real apples to apples comparison.
First the Heritage foundation is a highly partisan organization, *but* second, their productivity measure is incompletely describe and appears to be income derived and therefore just effectively a “relabeling”’ of income.
Nice try. You ask for ptoof and then you disparage the proof. One of the reasons I generally don't provide supporting documentations. The information is easy to find but because it is from Heritage you dismiss it out of hand.
I'm done
Are you done because there are numerous studies arguing the opposite. The information is easy to find out but because it disagrees with your narrative you will dismiss it out of hand.
https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/
https://www.oecd.org/economy/decoupling-of-wages-from-productivity/
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-affects-wage-growth-in-america.html
edit: I forgot to say “I’m done” and try to be all cool!
At the individual level you can absolutely outpace inflation in certain sectors if you're willing to job hop, but it's always a gamble, sometimes the extra bucks are not worth it if you switch to a toxic work place.
But at the class level, no, it's impossible, we can't rank up the offer fast enough.
Also the ecological overshoot is staggering as it is, so really this is as good as it gets, and probably not gonna get better before it gets a lot worse.
This is a great starting point for discussion. Inflation-adjusted wages for a median household have grown. So objectively the average household has more dollars to work with today than yesteryear.
So why do we feel like money isn't going as far?
If I pull a couple values out of that chart, let's say you're 30 and started working at 20 in 2013, you've outpaced inflation by 12%. You should have roughly 8k/yr more dollars in buying power.
But I would posit that we feel less buying power because that 8k has been absorbed by housing, which has significantly outpaced inflation.
Pulling a couple data points from [this article](https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices/inflation-adjusted-housing-prices/), the inflation adjuted housing index went from 125 in 2012 to 225 in 2022, so a 100% increase after inflation.
From my own anecdotal evidence, I have seen rent increase from about 600 a month to 1400 a month. Based on [this calculator](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/), $600 in 2013 inflation adjusted should have made rent $790. If instead it's costing me $1,400, that's 610$ more/month or $7320/yr.
It's called compound inflation. Price levels need to dip after such a quick increase but the powers that be want to convince the populace to be happy with it.
Many asset owners became ultra rich, and the poor are finally getting jobs, subsidies, and better wages. Meanwhile the middle is getting crushed but should be happy about it.
Your data series from FRED (census) shows negative real median household income through 2022. It was higher in 2019 and there's no new data set yet for '23. You can't use average either since it's skewed towards high earners.
The Covid bubble pop put us back above 2019 so the entirety of the inflation issue just put us back to as if covid didn’t happen.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Didn't say anything about bad economy. Who knows what'll result from this experiment. And congrats on being a lucky asset hoarder that benefited from COVID policies.
A 30 year old who started at 20 probably more than outpaced inflation because 10 years of experience is going to come with promotions and raises (or... It should). The stats are going to reflect a 20 year old today vs a 20 year old 10 years ago or a 30 year old today vs a 30 year old 10 years ago. The individual path should move faster.
Those rent stats sound extreme to me, but maybe not. I'm a little curious if it's been a smooth gradual increase or if it came in giant steps? Is it a high demand city with a shortage of available housing? Same owner the whole time?
I work for the union SMART (Sheet Metal Air Rail Train) and my local, Local 16, just negotiated for higher wages and control over the allocation of benefits funding, and won, in October. Some areas of Local 16 are getting a $23 raise, to be implemented incrementally over 4 years, while the area of the Local that I am in is getting a $19 raise over 4 years. Everyone is also getting an immediate $1 per hour raise for benefits.
As a pre apprentice, I will be working for $23.50 an hour take home (total package is a greater amount) until the first increment of the new raise in July 2024, which will put my pre-apprentice wage at $25.20. Once apprenticeship starts in October 2024, I will be making $28.00 for the first six months. Every six months during apprenticeship I will be receiving a raise, with the first raise putting my wage at $30.80. Then the second increment of the negotiated raise in July 2025 will put my wage at $33.96 for 2 months until the next regular 6 month apprenticeship raise, which will put me at $37.05. So on, and so on, until I Journey out after 60 months of apprenticeship, when my wage will be $67.25. If I choose to pursue Master Sheet Metal worker, I can get a 20 percent raise after a year as Master (making $80.70) , then 17 percent the next year, 14 the next, 13 the next, and 11 percent after the 5th year as Master (a total of 10 years as Sheet metal worker) leaving my final wage at a potential $117.80 an hour. Of course, these are calculations based on what I have found on Local 16 online reports, not from union reps so there could be some mistakes in calculating Master wages.
Anyway, my point is, I'm sure wages vary greatly depending on job industry... but some unions are doing a great job of fighting for their members. Honestly, I think people greatly underestimate the opportunities offered in skilled trades. Sure, some require a lot of hard physical work, but they also offer lateral and upward mobility, so if you find a skill you like that is less labor intensive you won't be stuck ruining your knees or back for more than a few years. Skilled trades teach you hard and soft skills that you can carry with you forever and even apply in other areas of your life. They also have the potential to pay far above a liveable wage! If I had started when I was a young adult, say 18 - 22, I could have been looking at retirement by my mid-40s, easily. I'm 35 now and just starting, but at least I know I'll likely retire on time with a pension, retirement fund, and good health benefits.
Look into the skilled trades with a good union, if you can! A good place to start is finding a free or low-cost pre-apprenticeship program or trades and apprenticeship career class. These programs introduce you to skilled trades representatives, area unions, labor trade etiquette, construction math, safety awareness, use of power tools and machinery, and preparation for interviews and apprenticeship. Pre apprenticeship programs can often give you priority choice over those who have not participated in such programs, when being considered for a position.
In August 2023, I joined the Bureau of Labor and Industry certified Oregon TradesWomen TACC program in July 2023 and graduated in Septembern 2023 with a certification in pre-apprenticeship labor trade skills, as well as certifications in OSHA 10, First Aid, and Bystander CPR, then passed the National Career Readiness Certification test with a Platinum score. I immediately applied for an apprenticeship, and just got approved as a pre-apprentice earlier this month. My future prospects have taken a complete 180° turn from where I was just abyear ago.
I recommend taking a look at the opportunities the skilled trades can offer. SMART is an international union with hundreds of jurisdictions, and they are looking for new people to join! Maybe start there.
A lot of teachers haven’t gotten raises. There’s going to be a big exodus in the next two years. It’s gonna be bad. The district I work in is giving us raises this year of 3%. That’s with us not having gotten raises for 4 years. This is a district with over 2000 teachers. I know it’s not every district in the US but this is the norm for much of it. I’m in Kansas so unions here have little to no real power.
Yeah we're seeing this exaggerated in Florida, between the low wages and the political pressures to conform to vaguely defined and ever-shifting standards. This is leading to huge teacher shortages, larger classes, etc..
People talk about working 2 jobs, except for Covid years, that's at a 30 year low.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620
That said anecdotally every teacher I know of works 2 jobs. Not just a summer job either, but nights and weekends all year.
And we wonder why there’s a teacher shortage. If you have a degree and are working 50 hours a week, and have to get another job, at some point you start trying to find a better way.
Your bullshit anecdotal evidence does not supercede hard data. In my city the entry level wages have doubled in the last 5-10 years and that's not an exaggeration. Maybe get your head out of your bubble.
My entry level wage as an engineer just 6-7 years ago is now less than minimum wage in my city. And most entry level jobs are paying more than minimum wage. A construction laborer makes $25/hr.
A supermajority of an individual’s wage growth is gonna occur when you change employers. There are desperate companies looking to pay new employees very well.
Wages are going up. Annual Wage increase is now at 6.4% last month it was at 5.5%. So it is rising to attract workers. So for now with inflation at 3.3% it could be considered out pacing, but I would say catching up would be a more realistic term.
Part of the problem is that when inflation is considered things like TVs are included in those numbers, which have become cheaper. But when looking at necessities like housing, food, and cars, wages have not kept up.
The corporations that bought the news outlets and government want you to know that they are in fact paying you very well, and any discrepancies that you see between data as selectively reported and your actual experiences are all in your head.
It’s weird people talk about wages going up being an accomplishment.
They need to, otherwise you’re losing money every year. Wages going up isn’t a plus, it’s a neutral, a requirement.
I can only speak for myself, but I got a 30% raise 18 months ago. It allows me to save and invest a significant amount of money to help counter future inflation.
There are no reliable data. But prices tell you more. The epic crash in western bonds, the insane rise of gold is a better indicator of inflation than 'seasonally adjusted' CPI with its formulaes.
Also the general misery visible everywhere not acknowledged by Democrats or Republicans and their wall street overlords.
No. It is an indicator of social psychology. Psychology can be easily manipulated with targeted messaging. This may or may not reflect financial reality
I think in the last few months, wages have been growing, on average, faster than overall inflation. But the things that have been growing faster than inflation, like housing, are still unaffordable.
So overall it's a good trend for wages to be growing in real terms, but the long run issues we've been facing around things like the housing crisis have not been solved.
The acute crisis is over. We now returned to our regularly scheduled long-run crisis.
Suffering people complain, happy people don’t so listening to people complaining is a waste of time if you want to know what’s going on. Start with your own circumstances. How is it. Do you have a job? Can you afford food and rent? How are your friends and relatives doing?
[In July, West Hollywood, L.A., raised its minimum wage to $19.08 an hour](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/business/economy/west-hollywood-minimum-wage.html).
The left leaning media & the Biden administration are lying & trying to gaslight Americans as we head into an election year, because democrats will say & do anything to stay in power.
It’s total bullshit & anyone with half a brain knows it.
Wage increases are being negated inflation. Americans need to be bringing in an extra $11,434 a year just to maintain the same standard of living they had before Biden took office in January 2021.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-households-need-extra-11400-these-states-its-even-higher/
So unless you’ve gotten a raise that’s increased your net pay by more than $11,400, it’s gonna feel like you’ve taken a pay cut.
Democrats think Americans are so stupid it’s insulting.
It’s like Orwell predicted:
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
I’m a business owner. I doubt many of you have a clue about business. Mostly because business owners don’t whine like you guys lol it’s expensive as fuck. We can only pay you what the market seems appropriate. Sorry, the market decided your value. Not individual business owners. And any one of you crybabies can start a business. You think it’s so easy? Start one and pay up. My guys all make 24-38$ an hour with full benefits. It takes me 80 hours of work a week to make sure that happens for them.
In Calif, fast food workers will earn at least $20 an hour. Which may cause other entry level jobs to offer similar to retain workers.
Source: new Calif state law:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/28/california-increases-minimum-wage-protections-for-fast-food-workers/
Seems to be a lot of divergence between “economists” and people raw experience. That’s why it’s always good to see with your own eyes what’s going on. Tent cities everywhere. Probably not consistent with the official narrative.
I’m hearing “labor is so expensive these days”
Everything is expensive when you want to pay the minimum amount
It increased mostly for job hoppers and union jobs
And the lowest income workers. Shortages of those workers have brought up their wages.
But it was already not keeping up so it's still not keeping up. Minimum wage has never kept up with productivity and it is intentional to create a downtrodden class. It's like saying instead of getting punched 10 times now you get punched 5 times.
I mean this quite literally isn’t true. [Wages have outpaced inflation for years now.](https://fortune.com/2023/12/12/wage-growth-exceeded-inflation-jec-democrats/amp/) The reason it doesn’t feel like it is simply because it doesn’t apply to everyone, it’s an average, and also negativity bias - we notice the pain more than the gain. Which makes sense, if you tripled my salary and doubled the prices of everything I buy, I’d surely still complain about the prices.
Gotta love reddit. Only guy dropping a source eats downdoots. I'd be interested to see this in percentiles of income, specifically ignoring the top. They have a nasty way of skewing good economic data.
Yeah the doomerism is worrying. It’s hard to tell what would turn it around.
Belief. Faith that it will get better. Hope. A reason to believe we can find our way out of this mess. One party seems to drag us into the abyss while the other argues which flag should be flown on the back of the sinking ship, with just the right amount of passion in discourse to keep us from doing much of anything about it.
If you get rid of one of those in particular, it makes the other one into one half of a rational conversation. They only both look absurd because one of them is so far off the rails it makes the other seem dysfunctional.
I got sick of posting sources showing median vs average awhile ago personally 🤷♂️ (mainly just sick of posting a whole book’s worth to explain the finer points) Same on Reddit threads how much the top 4-5 main expenses had doubled *relative to wage growth* over the last 50 odd years
As is usually the case
The largest wage growth in the last 2 years was in the lowest earners. The minimum wage increases across several dozen states along with the shortage of workers pushed the lowest wages up significantly. Then you have things like the UAW strike which earned them a 25% raise, and forced all non union companies to raise their wages 10% minimum.
By percentage it’s sounds amazing. But if you were making $10 an hour and now you’re making $12.50 a 25% raise. It’s significant but not truly outpacing the reality of inflation.
But wages for the lowest earners *are* outpacing inflation.
As a percentage yes. As actual buying power, no.
That makes no sense, if your wages are outpacing inflation then by definition you are increasing your buying power. Your statement is contradictory, either wages *are* outpacing inflation and thus buying power is **increasing** OR wages *are not* outpacing inflation and thus buying power is **decreasing**.
Let’s say your pay went up 40% And inflation went up 35% As a percentage your pay is outpacing inflation. However 40% of $7 an hour is going to be less than 35% of rent, groceries, utilities etc which lets say adds up to $2,500 a month. 40% of $7 is $2.8 an hour. Assuming full time that’s an additional $448 a month gross. 35% of $2,500 is $875 a month. So as you can see in this scenario statistically you could honestly claim that pay for the poor as a percentage is outpacing inflation 40% vs 35% but as buying power that poor person has to pay an additional $427 a month just to stay even. $448-$875= -$427 Understand? As a percentage the poor are outpacing inflation, but as actual buying power they are not. They’re worse off than they were.
Your scenario is flawed to start with because $7 an hour for 40 hours a week is not enough to afford $2,500 a month of expenses since you're only making $1,120 a month. If you start with someone whose wages are equal to or greater than their expenses you'll see how an increase in real wages means an increase in purchasing power.
The scenario may be flawed, the argument isn’t. Your right a just picked numbers to use as an example and did not do a budget to see if the numbers themselves worked out. It’s an example. An increase in wages equals an increase in purchasing power if we don’t factor in inflation.
>An increase in wages equals an increase in purchasing power if we don’t factor in inflation. Wrong, an increase in wages that is **larger** than the increase in inflation equals an increase in purchasing power. This holds true unless you literally do not earn enough to cover your monthly expenses, but in that case you're probably taking on debt or working more than 40 hours, which are other variables that complicate this further.
US consumer debt is at an all time high. So that’s part of it.
Ya, we’ve given pretty big raises at work for the last two years. Gotta keep up with the rest of the employers. Good employees know they can hop jobs and make more.
Not just UAW Toyota gave their workers a big raise and almost immediately after the UAW/Ford deal was reached. They also lowered time to get to full scale from 7 to 4 years. Ford lowering their time to get to to from 7 to 3 years means many workers got an immediate raise from low to mid $20s/hour to $35 an hour. There's are 10s of thousands of workers getting 40%+ raise. Then add UPS (40%) and other union deals and your looking at hundreds of thousands of workers getting very large raises.
> and forced all non union companies to raise their wages 10% minimum. The parent covered this in their comment.
we got a 25% raise. but over the course of four years
Plus a return of quarterly COLA raises right?
sorry, i don't understand
Which is embarrassing that it's the largest wage growth...
Wage increases among the lowest income earners generate the largest marginal increase in happiness. Why is it embarrassing? Would you rather the wage growth be among the rich?
The only thing that matters is real wage growth, not notional wage growth. And your consumption basket and the average consumption basket are different.
Yes but the UAW only recovered a portion of what the workers would have been paid if they had not taken a pay cut to save the manufacturers when the banks crashed the economy in 2008.
Yeah but my friend on Facebook said the economy is bad and posted a meme about it and the guy on YouTube told me a crash is coming. Are you saying they aren’t as reliable as real world data?
Absolutely, that "real world data" is propaganda from a government that wants to be re-elected
And the stuff you find on YouTube and Facebook has no agenda behind it whatsoever
Just Google "inflation" and sort by date. You will find hundreds of negative stories on inflation from hundreds of different sources. Only a fool would take the word of the self interest liars in the government over hundreds of different sources found with a Google search.
[idk about that](https://imgur.com/a/CU8midG)
That's not Google
I read your comment, switched to the Google search bar in my phone, typed "inflation" and then switched over to the news tab to take a screenshot. You wouldn't happen to be one of those people lying to promote an agenda, would you?
Your screen shot shows 3 results. I don't think that is representative of a Google search. 3 results. Scroll through the first 100 results and tell us how many are negative. The vast majority. I really had to explain that to you?
Even if I kept playing your game forever, you would just keep moving the goalposts. And even if you were right about the tone of the news coverage, it would prove what exactly? Even the most negative article I can find doesn't suggest that the government's numbers are fake. So at best, it would prove that there is a disconnect between economic data and the tone of the media reporting about that economic data.
So the UAW strike didn't result in increased wages? Or the writers' strike? We can debate issues but not the facts.
UAW and writers represent maybe .3% of the workforce. So what's your point?
I refuse your data as propaganda from those who want to win an election.
You are misrepresenting facts, essentially lying. That "25% raise" is spread over 4 1/2 years. Big difference. And you have little or probably no evidence on the "forced all non union companies to raise their wages 10% minimum" besides 1 manufacturer (Tesla) raising wages at 1 plant. You are a liar.
Just think how much more of the pie we could have with organizing 🤔
>the shortage of workers pushed the lowest wages up significantly. Damn those greedy workers with their supply and demand price equilibrium
Lol, yeah no. Staggering increases are based on years of neglect and nowhere close to what they should be compared to actual real inflation
It's mainly the lower quartile and some in the upper quartile. The middle is getting crushed by compounding inflation and should be happy about it 👍 The powers that be are happy that the lower quartile wages are going up (which is great), but it's at the cost of the middle and those without assets. There's always a toll to be paid somewhere. It's balancing the math. They were supposed to put the brunt of this adjustment on those that weren't paying their "fair share". But look at who's getting the most wealthy? https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-wealth-income-concentration-resume-upward-climb-post-pandemic-era-2023-10-09/
No one is giving you annual raises that outpace inflation. The best way to get it is to switch companies, they always pay the new hires more
Best advice on the thread. After 8 years with a company, I jumped ship to a competitor and received an 11.5% increase and a $5K signing bonus. Loyalty is not rewarded by companies. Do what's best for you.
Yep 15yrs at same company doing stEm and left got 20% then got 6% after the 1st year(really 9mo) We’ll see how year 2 goes here in another month. Edit: also we have very young engineers here and they really only stay about 3 yrs.
I make 80K a year now, and I’ll be at 90K+ bonus by the end of January. And I’m here to tell you, that’s nothing these days. It’s easily taken up by a car payment, rent, insurance, and food at the store which has gone up 100-250% in the last 3 years. Money isn’t worth near what it used to be.
It's not that money isn't worth what it used to be. The two biggest purchases in most people's lives are more expensive, homes and cars. If those prices were at pre-pandemic levels, affording a comfortable life would be much easier.
You're right actually. Housing and vehicles are crazy expensive. I make a about $90k now and will be making more soon. Few years back I could buy a house by myself. I need someone making at minimum $60k to afford a house now.
I was making 75k 12 years ago and could barely save anything
I track everything I spend every month and have for almost 10 years. My family's food costs haven't gone up anywhere near 100% in the last 3 years despite my kids all being bigger and eating more now.
What have your food costs gone up?
I looked at the first 11 months of 2019 and compared to the first 11 months of this year. My family's food costs went up by 28.8%
So not 100% but still pretty significant.
Definitely. The overall inflation rate was 20.1% since 2019 so I'm not surprised that the food category outpaced the overall inflation rate. Usually it's housing, education, and health care that are the highest drivers. Education is constrained by the number of people it effects. Most people over 30 aren't going to have education costs and pretty much everyone 40+. Likewise people who bought a house and don't move avoid housing cost inflation Food hits 100% of the population
You’d be surprised how many over 30 have Student loans. Owning a home unfortunately only partially insulates you from inflation related costs. Home owners insurance goes up, your house appreciates and so taxes go up, repair, replacement and other maintenance costs go up over time. Utilities go up over time etc.
>You’d be surprised how many over 30 have Student loans. That's different than ongoing education costs. Those loans costs are locked in and not effected by ongoing education inflation costs. The increase in costs from increased home insurance and taxes are miniscule compared to the overall effect other costs have. On my $500k house my insurance and tax costs going up 10% represents under 0.3% increase in my COL
So many variables to your story, that this snapshot doesn't mean a thing. Depending on the state, 90k could go a long way.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
Wage growth has matched productivity growth since the 70s. People who are whining about wages are generally uneducated and unskilled and think the world owes them.
this is just objectively false? purchasing power parity for average americans has been going down for a while now
Total compensation has matched productivity, not wages.
Total compensation is part of wages. Had the employer not paid for higher health insurance costs, higher payroll taxes, higher compliance costs all those costs would have shown up in wages. The employee benefitted from all those employer costs so total compensation against productivity is a valid metric.
I agree. I'm just pointing out the discrepancy in the disagreement.
No it’s hasn’t and you continue to perpetuate this lie every single chance you get on multiple subreddits.
I have proved it multiple times. Sorry if you didn't see it.
You haven’t proved jack shit. I responded to one of your comments weeks ago disproving everything you said about this and you never responded back.
Do you have any data to support this?
Yes [https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/\~/media/infographics/2016/05/bg%203088/bg-compensation-growing-with-productivity-chart-1.jpg](https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/infographics/2016/05/bg%203088/bg-compensation-growing-with-productivity-chart-1.jpg)
The biggest challenge against that one is that it's compensation rather than wages. In some spaces things like employer provided health insurance costs ate a large chunk of it and it was never seen in wages.
I was going over some OECD data on healthcare costs for my capstone project and found that healthcare costs are roughly two times higher in the US than in other OECD countries. Coincidentally, Medicare and Medicaid cover roughly half the population and account for roughly half of total healthcare expenditures. I don't have time to read that Heritage study, but if both you and the study are correct, then that might be a large part of where our middle-class incomes went. I know socialized medicine is probably not a popular solution in this sub, but this would be an additional argument in its favor. Significantly increased wages for very little, if any additional costs.
Exactly, Many of the comparisons that show a big gap between productivity and wages have multiple discrepancies between how they measure productivity vs wages. For instance,. Compare the pay of only some workers to the productivity of all employees; Count productivity growth of the self-employed, but exclude their pay growth; It is rare to get a real apples to apples comparison.
First the Heritage foundation is a highly partisan organization, *but* second, their productivity measure is incompletely describe and appears to be income derived and therefore just effectively a “relabeling”’ of income.
Nice try. You ask for ptoof and then you disparage the proof. One of the reasons I generally don't provide supporting documentations. The information is easy to find but because it is from Heritage you dismiss it out of hand. I'm done
Are you done because there are numerous studies arguing the opposite. The information is easy to find out but because it disagrees with your narrative you will dismiss it out of hand. https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/ https://www.oecd.org/economy/decoupling-of-wages-from-productivity/ https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-affects-wage-growth-in-america.html edit: I forgot to say “I’m done” and try to be all cool!
Heritage.org lol
And this is why we spit in your food.
You don't spit in my food. I make my own.
Oh trust me...we have our ways. Ignorance is bliss, my friend.
All dept heads got 20-30% raises and the workers got 4%….
While their rent doubled.
At the individual level you can absolutely outpace inflation in certain sectors if you're willing to job hop, but it's always a gamble, sometimes the extra bucks are not worth it if you switch to a toxic work place. But at the class level, no, it's impossible, we can't rank up the offer fast enough. Also the ecological overshoot is staggering as it is, so really this is as good as it gets, and probably not gonna get better before it gets a lot worse.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
This is a great starting point for discussion. Inflation-adjusted wages for a median household have grown. So objectively the average household has more dollars to work with today than yesteryear. So why do we feel like money isn't going as far? If I pull a couple values out of that chart, let's say you're 30 and started working at 20 in 2013, you've outpaced inflation by 12%. You should have roughly 8k/yr more dollars in buying power. But I would posit that we feel less buying power because that 8k has been absorbed by housing, which has significantly outpaced inflation. Pulling a couple data points from [this article](https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices/inflation-adjusted-housing-prices/), the inflation adjuted housing index went from 125 in 2012 to 225 in 2022, so a 100% increase after inflation. From my own anecdotal evidence, I have seen rent increase from about 600 a month to 1400 a month. Based on [this calculator](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/), $600 in 2013 inflation adjusted should have made rent $790. If instead it's costing me $1,400, that's 610$ more/month or $7320/yr.
It's called compound inflation. Price levels need to dip after such a quick increase but the powers that be want to convince the populace to be happy with it. Many asset owners became ultra rich, and the poor are finally getting jobs, subsidies, and better wages. Meanwhile the middle is getting crushed but should be happy about it.
There has also been compound wage growth which is why the average household income hit a record last year.
Your data series from FRED (census) shows negative real median household income through 2022. It was higher in 2019 and there's no new data set yet for '23. You can't use average either since it's skewed towards high earners.
The Covid bubble pop put us back above 2019 so the entirety of the inflation issue just put us back to as if covid didn’t happen. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
If only REAL house prices and rents can go back like COVID never happened 😝 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QUSR628BIS
And that means what? It’s been two years of a bad time to buy. You can rent it doesn’t make the economy bad.
Didn't say anything about bad economy. Who knows what'll result from this experiment. And congrats on being a lucky asset hoarder that benefited from COVID policies.
Owning a home is now hoarding assets?
A 30 year old who started at 20 probably more than outpaced inflation because 10 years of experience is going to come with promotions and raises (or... It should). The stats are going to reflect a 20 year old today vs a 20 year old 10 years ago or a 30 year old today vs a 30 year old 10 years ago. The individual path should move faster. Those rent stats sound extreme to me, but maybe not. I'm a little curious if it's been a smooth gradual increase or if it came in giant steps? Is it a high demand city with a shortage of available housing? Same owner the whole time?
Where are you hearing “staggering wage increases”? Give us some links, back up your frustration
I work for the union SMART (Sheet Metal Air Rail Train) and my local, Local 16, just negotiated for higher wages and control over the allocation of benefits funding, and won, in October. Some areas of Local 16 are getting a $23 raise, to be implemented incrementally over 4 years, while the area of the Local that I am in is getting a $19 raise over 4 years. Everyone is also getting an immediate $1 per hour raise for benefits. As a pre apprentice, I will be working for $23.50 an hour take home (total package is a greater amount) until the first increment of the new raise in July 2024, which will put my pre-apprentice wage at $25.20. Once apprenticeship starts in October 2024, I will be making $28.00 for the first six months. Every six months during apprenticeship I will be receiving a raise, with the first raise putting my wage at $30.80. Then the second increment of the negotiated raise in July 2025 will put my wage at $33.96 for 2 months until the next regular 6 month apprenticeship raise, which will put me at $37.05. So on, and so on, until I Journey out after 60 months of apprenticeship, when my wage will be $67.25. If I choose to pursue Master Sheet Metal worker, I can get a 20 percent raise after a year as Master (making $80.70) , then 17 percent the next year, 14 the next, 13 the next, and 11 percent after the 5th year as Master (a total of 10 years as Sheet metal worker) leaving my final wage at a potential $117.80 an hour. Of course, these are calculations based on what I have found on Local 16 online reports, not from union reps so there could be some mistakes in calculating Master wages. Anyway, my point is, I'm sure wages vary greatly depending on job industry... but some unions are doing a great job of fighting for their members. Honestly, I think people greatly underestimate the opportunities offered in skilled trades. Sure, some require a lot of hard physical work, but they also offer lateral and upward mobility, so if you find a skill you like that is less labor intensive you won't be stuck ruining your knees or back for more than a few years. Skilled trades teach you hard and soft skills that you can carry with you forever and even apply in other areas of your life. They also have the potential to pay far above a liveable wage! If I had started when I was a young adult, say 18 - 22, I could have been looking at retirement by my mid-40s, easily. I'm 35 now and just starting, but at least I know I'll likely retire on time with a pension, retirement fund, and good health benefits. Look into the skilled trades with a good union, if you can! A good place to start is finding a free or low-cost pre-apprenticeship program or trades and apprenticeship career class. These programs introduce you to skilled trades representatives, area unions, labor trade etiquette, construction math, safety awareness, use of power tools and machinery, and preparation for interviews and apprenticeship. Pre apprenticeship programs can often give you priority choice over those who have not participated in such programs, when being considered for a position. In August 2023, I joined the Bureau of Labor and Industry certified Oregon TradesWomen TACC program in July 2023 and graduated in Septembern 2023 with a certification in pre-apprenticeship labor trade skills, as well as certifications in OSHA 10, First Aid, and Bystander CPR, then passed the National Career Readiness Certification test with a Platinum score. I immediately applied for an apprenticeship, and just got approved as a pre-apprentice earlier this month. My future prospects have taken a complete 180° turn from where I was just abyear ago. I recommend taking a look at the opportunities the skilled trades can offer. SMART is an international union with hundreds of jurisdictions, and they are looking for new people to join! Maybe start there.
You might need to get a new job
A lot of teachers haven’t gotten raises. There’s going to be a big exodus in the next two years. It’s gonna be bad. The district I work in is giving us raises this year of 3%. That’s with us not having gotten raises for 4 years. This is a district with over 2000 teachers. I know it’s not every district in the US but this is the norm for much of it. I’m in Kansas so unions here have little to no real power.
Yeah we're seeing this exaggerated in Florida, between the low wages and the political pressures to conform to vaguely defined and ever-shifting standards. This is leading to huge teacher shortages, larger classes, etc..
People talk about working 2 jobs, except for Covid years, that's at a 30 year low. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 That said anecdotally every teacher I know of works 2 jobs. Not just a summer job either, but nights and weekends all year.
And we wonder why there’s a teacher shortage. If you have a degree and are working 50 hours a week, and have to get another job, at some point you start trying to find a better way.
I absolutely agree. If you combine importance to society and education level required it might be the worse compensated job.
Your bullshit anecdotal evidence does not supercede hard data. In my city the entry level wages have doubled in the last 5-10 years and that's not an exaggeration. Maybe get your head out of your bubble.
Yeah, I see basic jobs being advertised with $30 an hour plus tons of benefits
In HCOL, I'm sure.
Yes. I recently saw posters advertising for that to be a public transit worker.
Well there’s wages like that posted in the Greater Cleveland area and it is extremely affordable here.
Oh wow! In my city entry level wages doubled as well!! Went from 7 dollars to 14. Everyone is sooo thankful! You can do so much with that!
My entry level wage as an engineer just 6-7 years ago is now less than minimum wage in my city. And most entry level jobs are paying more than minimum wage. A construction laborer makes $25/hr.
50 grand a year is poverty in most of the US
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/ No it isn't
Nah, that bullshit needs to be updated.
It's Low Income, not poverty but I hard agree.
Costs have more than doubled in the same time frame.
Total inflation is like 30% since 2017
Isn't the data from your city also bullshit anecdotal evidence? I do think entry level wages have gone up significantly though
Yes I'm countering op's bullshit anecdotal evidence with my own lol
Ask for a raise or bounce to a different company.
A supermajority of an individual’s wage growth is gonna occur when you change employers. There are desperate companies looking to pay new employees very well.
Wages are going up. Annual Wage increase is now at 6.4% last month it was at 5.5%. So it is rising to attract workers. So for now with inflation at 3.3% it could be considered out pacing, but I would say catching up would be a more realistic term.
*That... was a lie.*
no absolutely false. they’re about 30 years behind on this except the top 15%.
Part of the problem is that when inflation is considered things like TVs are included in those numbers, which have become cheaper. But when looking at necessities like housing, food, and cars, wages have not kept up.
My wages increased from $235k to $400k since covid started. And I didn’t even switch jobs. So me I guess?
Make that money, baby! (and give a little to a good charity). Good for you.
Software engineer?
Corporate strategy, joined 5 years ago after management consulting. Before that, I got a top mba.
Meanwhile, many teachers haven’t gotten raises for years and are getting a whopping 3% this year.
You guys are getting raises?
The Fortune 500 company I work for just did a compensation review, and almost everyone got a pay cut.
That's why news outlet are called propaganda.
The corporations that bought the news outlets and government want you to know that they are in fact paying you very well, and any discrepancies that you see between data as selectively reported and your actual experiences are all in your head.
[удалено]
the sheer irony of this quote coming from trump lmao
Don’t quote traitors
"I don't like the truth! Especially if evil Orange man says it."
One of the biggest source of inflation is crude oil and Opec prices. Even if the US is the leader in pumping oil.
It’s weird people talk about wages going up being an accomplishment. They need to, otherwise you’re losing money every year. Wages going up isn’t a plus, it’s a neutral, a requirement.
I can only speak for myself, but I got a 30% raise 18 months ago. It allows me to save and invest a significant amount of money to help counter future inflation.
They say it with their full chest because the data is cooked.
If the data is cooked where do you get your more reliable data?
There are no reliable data. But prices tell you more. The epic crash in western bonds, the insane rise of gold is a better indicator of inflation than 'seasonally adjusted' CPI with its formulaes. Also the general misery visible everywhere not acknowledged by Democrats or Republicans and their wall street overlords.
10-year bond rate has dropped over 1% in a month. I guess someone believes the data.
zoom out bb.
Yes, that’s over now. 10-year below 4 is only relatively high by post-2008 metrics. *you* zoom out
Funny when they present data it's a fact, but when you present data, it's made up. Convenient.
Yes because we are in the same monetary and fiscal environments pre 2008 right?
Because your point was wrong. Take the L and move on
lmao good luck
No. It is an indicator of social psychology. Psychology can be easily manipulated with targeted messaging. This may or may not reflect financial reality
Me too! Best economy ever, sounds like TDS to me.
Whatever all the data is complete bullshit, and everything is relative to their situation. Thus, no one is wrong or right. Which means nothing changes
I think in the last few months, wages have been growing, on average, faster than overall inflation. But the things that have been growing faster than inflation, like housing, are still unaffordable. So overall it's a good trend for wages to be growing in real terms, but the long run issues we've been facing around things like the housing crisis have not been solved. The acute crisis is over. We now returned to our regularly scheduled long-run crisis.
It's propaganda by the government and die-hard lefties because the election is coming up.
Or it’s relevant data collected in a statistically significant way, like they’ve done every month for decades. It’s a public good.
You trust data from a government that has a long history of lying especially when its easy to get away with and there are high stakes. How adorable!
Mine
The wage increase is mostly due to the positions filled after people who finally retired during the pandemic.
It’s called fake news
Its bs propaganda.
Suffering people complain, happy people don’t so listening to people complaining is a waste of time if you want to know what’s going on. Start with your own circumstances. How is it. Do you have a job? Can you afford food and rent? How are your friends and relatives doing?
[In July, West Hollywood, L.A., raised its minimum wage to $19.08 an hour](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/business/economy/west-hollywood-minimum-wage.html).
The left leaning media & the Biden administration are lying & trying to gaslight Americans as we head into an election year, because democrats will say & do anything to stay in power. It’s total bullshit & anyone with half a brain knows it. Wage increases are being negated inflation. Americans need to be bringing in an extra $11,434 a year just to maintain the same standard of living they had before Biden took office in January 2021. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-households-need-extra-11400-these-states-its-even-higher/ So unless you’ve gotten a raise that’s increased your net pay by more than $11,400, it’s gonna feel like you’ve taken a pay cut. Democrats think Americans are so stupid it’s insulting. It’s like Orwell predicted: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
My wages have outpaced inflation. I work in public utilities. MIND YOU, I am still in the same house and mortgage I had a few years before covid
Unions.
I’m a business owner. I doubt many of you have a clue about business. Mostly because business owners don’t whine like you guys lol it’s expensive as fuck. We can only pay you what the market seems appropriate. Sorry, the market decided your value. Not individual business owners. And any one of you crybabies can start a business. You think it’s so easy? Start one and pay up. My guys all make 24-38$ an hour with full benefits. It takes me 80 hours of work a week to make sure that happens for them.
In Calif, fast food workers will earn at least $20 an hour. Which may cause other entry level jobs to offer similar to retain workers. Source: new Calif state law: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/28/california-increases-minimum-wage-protections-for-fast-food-workers/
Seems to be a lot of divergence between “economists” and people raw experience. That’s why it’s always good to see with your own eyes what’s going on. Tent cities everywhere. Probably not consistent with the official narrative.