President Donald Trump, having handed off the worst economy of any modern president on his way out four years ago (obviously with a strong assist from COVID), inherited arguably the strongest economy of any president since the 1960s this week. As we wait to see the effects of Trump’s avalanche of executive actions and the fate of his legislative agenda, we should be clear about the baseline from which he is starting.
I think you give a higher score than is deserved. The "average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers" increased by 4% over a 5 year period, 2019 to 2024, see here: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000031 -- And the present level, December 2024, is actually lower than it was in December 1971, 53 years ago. This is a source of unremitting pain and suffering that the Democratic Party refuses, it seems, to acknowledge. This group of nonsupervisory workers comprises over 80% of the employed workforce. Infact, since Biden took office, Jan. 2021, the nonsupervisory wages are down by 2.0% -- somewhat the opposite of what this essay presents. I went to the Hamilton Project report you cite, and the last graph there showed very modest wage gains, over 5 years, around 0.3%. I also went to RealTime Inequalty and that seemed to confirm my pessimistic conclusion -- see average factor income for adults 25 to 64 over the Biden period. Many media and think tanks paint a rosy picture, only to find that many disgruntled voters don't buy the picture.
A fair presentation would be to mention the potential of the Build Back Better proposal that Biden spent about 2 years promoting, but was narrrowly defeated. It would have created a much stronger economy. The Treasury report you cite is very interesting and positive. The Covid period created a very strange economy, and it's difficult to explain it. It was the shortest recession on record, but it took 2 years 3 months for weekly nominal earnings to recover (nominal not real). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1CXYc -- my blog: http://benL88.blogspot.com
I think you give a higher score than is deserved. The "average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers" increased by 4% over a 5 year period, 2019 to 2024, see here: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000031 -- And the present level, December 2024, is actually lower than it was in December 1971, 53 years ago. This is a source of unremitting pain and suffering that the Democratic Party refuses, it seems, to acknowledge. This group of nonsupervisory workers comprises over 80% of the employed workforce. Infact, since Biden took office, Jan. 2021, the nonsupervisory wages are down by 2.0% -- somewhat the opposite of what this essay presents. I went to the Hamilton Project report you cite, and the last graph there showed very modest wage gains, over 5 years, around 0.3%. I also went to RealTime Inequalty and that seemed to confirm my pessimistic conclusion -- see average factor income for adults 25 to 64 over the Biden period. Many media and think tanks paint a rosy picture, only to find that many disgruntled voters don't buy the picture.
A fair presentation would be to mention the potential of the Build Back Better proposal that Biden spent about 2 years promoting, but was narrrowly defeated. It would have created a much stronger economy. The Treasury report you cite is very interesting and positive. The Covid period created a very strange economy, and it's difficult to explain it. It was the shortest recession on record, but it took 2 years 3 months for weekly nominal earnings to recover (nominal not real). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1CXYc -- my blog: http://benL88.blogspot.com