Nice try dweeb, but wages for workers have not fallen behind under Biden-Harris

If you're one of my 5 regular readers, you know that one of the things I can't stand is GOP dishonesty. Like this stuff from a Heritage Foundation Koch-sucker.

Why are people so dissatisfied w/ the economy? B/c cumulative inflation since Q4 '20 exceeds 20%, eclipsing earnings growth so that your larger paycheck buys you less; you're demonstrably worse off - almost 4 years and no progress: pic.twitter.com/rwAY1O8WnX

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) October 19, 2024

Hey EJ! Know what else was happening in Q4 2020? A US unemployment rate of 6.7%, mostly because we were still in a pandemic where US deaths were 30-50% higher than expected during that quarter.

And the types of jobs that made up a whole lot of that unemployed? The leisure and hospitality sector, which incldued bars and restaurants being down 2.5 million jobs from the pre-COVID peak, accomodation services was down nearly 800,000 and arts, entertainment and recreation was down more than 3/4 of a million jobs at the end of 2020.

That was more than 1/4 of the 9.8 million-job loss of Americans at the time, well above the 11% jobs that those 3 sectors accounted for in the pre-COVID peak of February 2020. In addition, the leisure and hospitality sector had average (nominal) weekly wages of $438 in the last 3 months of 2020, well below the Q4 2020 median of $983. (Yes I know average isn't exactly the same as median, but you get the idea).

So this means the average weekly wage would be higher in Q4 than normal, solely because a lot of jobs were lost in those low-wage sectors. Conversely, between December 2020 and December 2021, as Americans got vaccinated and more economic activity in travel and personal contact industries resumed, the US added 7.25 million jobs, with 2.46 million (34%) of those jobs coming back to bars/restaurants, accomodation services, and arts, entertainment, and rec.

would And even though average weekly wages in the leisure and hospitality industry had jumped to $507 from $438 a year ago (a 16% increase!), it was still barely half the overall median weekly wage of $1,009 at the end of 2021. Needless to say, with more of the restored jobs being in lower-wage industries, that'll drive the median weekly wage down.

So let's do a fairer comparison, which is to look at where real median wages are compared to 2019, or even Q1 2020 (as most of the job losses didn't hit until mid-March and so the wages won't be too distorted). And it gives a much different look than what Heritage's boy wants to tell you about.

Yes, there may have been no change for median weekly wages between the end of 2019 and 2021, but that hides the fact that higher-wage earners weren't getting the amount of gains that lower-wage workers got. And since inflation peaked in the middle of 2022, we've seen real gains of 3.3% over the 9 quarters since then. Pretty darn good if you ask me.

But even though you may have already figured out that things were better than 2020 just by thinking about it for a few seconds. EJ Antoni isn't getting his "charity-funded" salary at the Heritage Foundation to give honest assessments. And the fact that it takes this amount of explanation to show just how full of shit that guy is helps to explain why him and other Trump/GOPs try this dishonest "THINGS COST MORE THAN 4 YEARS AGO" theme, without explaining why or giving any policy that would help Americans pay less.

In fact, we know that the policies promoted by Trump and the real agenda-setters at Heritage's Project 2025 would cause inflation to fire back up, instead of keeping it under control like it is today. But alleged PhD EJ Antoni (who has never had a job outside of wingnut welfare) isn't going to tell you that, either.