6 ms·

Most Americans’ Wages Have Actually Declined Over the Past Year

91 points by pulisse 8y ago

malvosenior 8y ago
Yikes, what happened to impartial (or at least the apperance of it) reporting? This thing reads like a straight up hit piece on Trump. It's impossible to take something like this seriously when it's so obviously slanted. Sad to see it on the front page of HN.
- Bucephalus355 8y ago
  This article mentions the Koch Brothers, as if they are allied with Donald Trump. They are not. Donald Trump actually hates the Koch brothers (or at least his base does), and there is deep hatred for them on the comments section of Breitbart. Steve Bannon ha basically accused the Koch’s of treason. One way of viewing Trump’s actions might be in terms of “crisis theory”, or the idea in the 70’s to destroy the welfare system by overpopulating its sign-ups, thus forcing the creation of something new. He pouring gasoline on the economy to ignite and bring about its ruin. If you’re poor right now, you can probably live in some very creative ways. The wealthy are not very good at dealing with large declines in income, as evidenced by the German billionaire who killed him self in 2009 after his net worth dropped from $8 billion to $5 billion: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUSTRE5055O820090106 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUS... The opposite goal of this is the elites of the world who want to run a steady, slow-mo bubble ala Japan of the last 25 years. It definitely would be stable and work, but it would preserve the status quo and not really offer anything new to the working class.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    Sounds like accelerationism, which is a Marxist theory of destroying capitalism by helping it reach excesses that cause a systemic collapse. Perhaps the far right and the far left and not so different in matters of eschatology.
    - JackCh 8y ago
      Accelerationism could be advocated by anybody who wants radical change that the majority of the public are not on board with, under the belief that the present course will bring more people to agree with them. If it makes sense to the Marxists, it probably makes sense to the far right as well. Of course if they miscalculate, they just end up working against their own interests.
- AFNobody 8y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-inflation-at-six-year-high-eating-away-at-wage-increases https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-infla... > A separate Labor Department report on Tuesday illustrated how higher prices are pinching wallets: average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, were unchanged in May from a year earlier, even as nominal pay accelerated to a 2.7 percent annual gain from 2.6 percent in April. For production and nonsupervisory workers, real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent from a year earlier. The article I linked is an impartial example but it is not better. The simple truth is the underlying numbers haven't really improved since the GOP took the reigns. We are in a sideways holding pattern of 0% real wage growth and 2% of the working-age population has stopped looking for work since 2000[1]. The effects of the outgoing administration's economic policy last ~1 year after they leave office since the government doesn't really turn on a dime. The trends, honestly, are the same as they were under Obama and the GOP has done nothing but claim "Well we did it! Everything is fine now" despite the fact nothing of any real substance has changed since they took control of all 3 branches of government. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
- thesausageking 8y ago
  What about it do you think is slanted? It's data-driven and presents both good ("The overall unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in decades; the African-American unemployment rate is the lowest in recorded history") and bad ("Americans are deeply indebted, many are stuck with part-time jobs, and wage gains have been so disappointing, their weakness has challenged fundamental premises of mainstream economics") about the economy and Trump's contribution to it.
  - Bucephalus355 8y ago
    I don’t think it’s slanted as much as it’s just a shallow analysis. Obviously there are the surface indicators of truth (a statistic here, a fact there, a nice quote from somebody), but big picture, the issue is not “is this Trump guy a good tinkerer economist/engineer of the US stock market”, but how the bipartisan monopoly of power in Washington has stabbed the working class in the back at every turn. The big clue that the author would never understand this was his conflating of Koch and Trump. That would be like saying Shite and Sunni Muslims are the same. It’s an incredible cultural oversight. A good example of btw of this “stab you in the back” elite is Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. For all her work promoting freedom and women’s rights, the network marketing scam company Herbalife paid her $6 million to promote increased legalization of its products. It’s a scam company that preys on the poor. http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04/herbalife-useful-idiot-madeleine.html?m=1 http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04...
    - aerotwelve 8y ago
      I don't want to get into a political grudge match here, but I wouldn't say that Trump and Koch are polar opposites by any means. Trump's tax bill was a Cato (Koch funded) Institute special. If it turned out David Koch himself wrote it, I wouldn't be surprised. The ALEC club may not like Trump's views on immigration or tariffs, but they're in perfect sync when it comes to more or less every other economic issue. And the administration's energy policy is another massive win for them as well.
- RickJWagner 8y ago
  Truth on such matters gets you downvotes!
  - delbel 8y ago
    I get upset when my comments aren't downvoted here because of that
- delbel 8y ago
  You have to put your self in these peoples shoes -- for the past 10 years, under Obama, they have been lying through their teeth about an economic recovery that never happened. Now that it is actually happening, they don't know what to do. Also some of these people, including all of millenniums, have never even experience working during a time where america has economically prospered. This is totally new to them, on top of that, they have no skills to offer so it places them at a disadvantage. They spent the beginning of their career underemployeed or not employeed at all. Have you tried hiring a millennium? they have no work ethics. The ones that do are worth high wages because of the shortages. Now the economy is turning around, employers are hiring them anyway because they have no choice.
  - sctb 8y ago
    Could you please not post unsubstantively like this? We can't learn anything from it and that's what we're here for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - delbel 8y ago
      So whatever happened to the people here who doxed me, and threaten to burn down my house with a forest fire, and was up voted to the top? You guys did nothing when I complained. Somebody did start a forest fire near my house we were at level 2 evacuation for months.
      - sctb 8y ago
        I'm sorry but I don't know anything about that. The best way to reach us is hn@ycombinator.com. We don't see everything on the site.
Bucephalus355 8y ago
I think it would be unusual to see wage gains. Wage gains at this point would occur when labor pressures / basically existentially threatens capital, and probably nothing else. We don’t see a lot of labor pressure; there is no organized labor movement left anymore. There has been more and more talk about developers unionizing, although less about money and more about ethics (e.g. the AI stuff with Google). I say that to suggest we might see other areas unionize, and obviously they will demand more money, and then wages will rise. Unfortunately, the catalyst for pressure on capital / resurrection of labor power might be a “more-severe-than-2008” style depression. Because even if wages aren’t rising now, things are kind-of-sort-of good / not terrible for a lot of people. I think most people would be scared to risk it if life is bearable. Such a recession (if it occurs) would undoubtedly strip away any of the defenses of the ruling classes that remained after 2008 (and have slowly been hammered at ever since), so the ppl with the power will be weak and those with the demands will be extraordinarily motivated and with nothing to lose.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- arkades 8y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/13/a-minimum-wage-worker-cant-afford-a-2-bedroom-apartment-anywhere-in-the-u-s/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/13/a-min... Most minimum wage workers can’t afford a 1br apartment in most of the country. “Kind of sort of not terrible” may actually be a high target to aim for.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    One of the surprising things about poverty statistics is that you find that most people classified as living in poverty are families, because your expenses go up drastically. Many young people - eg those making minimum wage - live with roommates or in studio apartments and don't really feel significantly disadvantaged by the fact that they can't afford a 1br apartment. I say this not to say that everyone is doing fine, but that the details can matter a lot. On a different note, for a fixed amount of housing stock, it is a purely positional good, you can't improve the number of people who can afford a 1br by simply paying people more, you have to build more, or enforce strict rent controls which makes it not a problem of income, but one of luck and inevitably corruption.
bcheung 8y ago
> There is essentially no evidence that the president’s tax cuts (his sole piece of major economic legislation) did anything to significantly improve America’s macroeconomic performance. This is probably true. But there's also no evidence to support that it hurt either. It's quite disingenuous and misleading to make such claims when there hasn't even been a single year of tax filings since the new tax policies have taken effect. Policies, especially tax policies, have long lag effects. Also, there are so many variables and other factors to consider that it is impossible to think so 1-dimensionally.
- RangerScience 8y ago
  > Policies, especially tax policies, have long lag effects. Which would imply that any gains (or losses) now would have to do with policy changes during the prior administration, supporting the author's point. So, alright, what's misleading the implication that they could have any significant effect by now.
  - bcheung 8y ago
    Or the prior prior administration, or the prior prior prior administration. Or the result of economic policies from other nations, or any other countless factors.
- elgenie 8y ago
  The short term impacts aren't that difficult to calculate because a lot of tax receipts come in throughout the year, as do reports on real wage growth, unemployment, and corporate investment activity. The federal deficit for May was $146.80B, 66% greater than May '17. There are times for the federal government to run a deficit and inject money into the economy, but when it's done largely as a corporate tax cut in a time of full employment and record corporate profits (both indicating that businesses don't see many opportunities to reinvest in themselves), you'd expect to see that money go out as stock buybacks and dividends. And that's exactly what we've been seeing. There's no need to wait for long term lag effects if the short term investments that are the only plausible story for those effects materializing simply haven't happened. Yes, the stock market has been propped up, but it's with fool's gold; there are no gains in either productivity or national capital stocks (public or private). Meanwhile, increase in debt service as a percentage of the federal budget has been guaranteed. The burden of proof is on the tax cut authors to prove the short term growth that justifies it.
jeffbax 8y ago
The problem with articles like these is that they leave out the fact that non-wage benefits are consuming more and more of the compensation growth that may have otherwise gone into wages. Particularly healthcare costs… largely accelerated since the ACA, which NYMag supports wholeheartedly and is IMO a glaring omission in an article like this.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  You'll have to cite evidence the ACA is accelerating it especially when the majority of health care economists disagree with that.
  - dlp211 8y ago
    That and most wage workers are not part of the public insurance pool and are therefore mostly insulated from the ACA. Any increased costs due to insurance requirements or regulations should be stabilized by now for employer plans.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Unemployment sinks to record levels, is this celebrated? Not at this 'news' source. Here the argument is twisted to be about tangential issues. Odd, there was none of this a few years ago...
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Wages are most certainly not a 'tangential issue'.
- Animats 8y ago
  Maybe jobs are being created at the bottom. That reduces both unemployment and the average wage. Exciting new-economy opportunities, like delivering for Doordash or recharging Bird scooters, pay very poorly.
- dlp211 8y ago
  Or, and this may just be a crazy thing to think, unemployment is at historic lows so why aren't real wages rising is a valid question to be asking and explaining.
- Retra 8y ago
  There was plenty of this a few years ago. It's been pretty constant for the last decade at least.
Isamu 8y ago
I was just complaining about articles like this. If you are discussing a trend, you have to show a time series graph that demonstrates the trend you are claiming. Anything else is blather. There are three graphs, none of which are about wages. Call me crazy, but I would like to see a graph of, you know, "most Americans' wages" over the last few years if we are talking about the trend in most Americans' wages.
rdiddly 8y ago
Wishing for a version of this article for those who don't care about Trump or the debunking thereof.
wolfspider 8y ago
These were labor and manufacturing jobs that were created and actually the retail jobs took a hit according to this: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-new-jobs-were-created-in-these-5-states-2018-01-26 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-new-jobs-were-crea... If I read that article in combination with the one we're discussing it looks like there is a race to the bottom whether its temp jobs or contractors. For instance here in Florida we employ lots of people in the hospitality industry and in the outskirts of those bigger cities (Tampa Bay for example) average wages are so low its shocking. Just take a look some time, whether this is good or bad is up for you to decide. For me I think unless we subsidize education more and do it fast that will be the new crisis.
RachelF 8y ago
There is a feeling among some economists that some key data like inflation, wages and unemployment are fudged by government departments to make them look good. Things like the definition of "unemployment" have changed. If you work 1 hour a month you are employed. If you have been unemployed for longer than 3 months, you are no longer among the unemployed. The reasons cited by the officials always sound rational, but their net effect is to make government statistics look a lot better than they actually are. There is a discussion of this here http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... or here https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/big-mac-index-suggests-america-in-decade-long-depression-peter-diekmeyer-30-042018.html https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/big-mac-index-suggests-amer...

91 points by pulisse 8y ago

Yikes, what happened to impartial (or at least the apperance of it) reporting? This thing reads like a straight up hit piece on Trump. It's impossible to take something like this seriously when it's so obviously slanted. Sad to see it on the front page of HN.

Bucephalus355 8y ago
This article mentions the Koch Brothers, as if they are allied with Donald Trump. They are not. Donald Trump actually hates the Koch brothers (or at least his base does), and there is deep hatred for them on the comments section of Breitbart. Steve Bannon ha basically accused the Koch’s of treason. One way of viewing Trump’s actions might be in terms of “crisis theory”, or the idea in the 70’s to destroy the welfare system by overpopulating its sign-ups, thus forcing the creation of something new. He pouring gasoline on the economy to ignite and bring about its ruin. If you’re poor right now, you can probably live in some very creative ways. The wealthy are not very good at dealing with large declines in income, as evidenced by the German billionaire who killed him self in 2009 after his net worth dropped from $8 billion to $5 billion: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUSTRE5055O820090106 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUS... The opposite goal of this is the elites of the world who want to run a steady, slow-mo bubble ala Japan of the last 25 years. It definitely would be stable and work, but it would preserve the status quo and not really offer anything new to the working class.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Sounds like accelerationism, which is a Marxist theory of destroying capitalism by helping it reach excesses that cause a systemic collapse. Perhaps the far right and the far left and not so different in matters of eschatology.
  - JackCh 8y ago
    Accelerationism could be advocated by anybody who wants radical change that the majority of the public are not on board with, under the belief that the present course will bring more people to agree with them. If it makes sense to the Marxists, it probably makes sense to the far right as well. Of course if they miscalculate, they just end up working against their own interests.
AFNobody 8y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-inflation-at-six-year-high-eating-away-at-wage-increases https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-infla... > A separate Labor Department report on Tuesday illustrated how higher prices are pinching wallets: average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, were unchanged in May from a year earlier, even as nominal pay accelerated to a 2.7 percent annual gain from 2.6 percent in April. For production and nonsupervisory workers, real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent from a year earlier. The article I linked is an impartial example but it is not better. The simple truth is the underlying numbers haven't really improved since the GOP took the reigns. We are in a sideways holding pattern of 0% real wage growth and 2% of the working-age population has stopped looking for work since 2000[1]. The effects of the outgoing administration's economic policy last ~1 year after they leave office since the government doesn't really turn on a dime. The trends, honestly, are the same as they were under Obama and the GOP has done nothing but claim "Well we did it! Everything is fine now" despite the fact nothing of any real substance has changed since they took control of all 3 branches of government. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
thesausageking 8y ago
What about it do you think is slanted? It's data-driven and presents both good ("The overall unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in decades; the African-American unemployment rate is the lowest in recorded history") and bad ("Americans are deeply indebted, many are stuck with part-time jobs, and wage gains have been so disappointing, their weakness has challenged fundamental premises of mainstream economics") about the economy and Trump's contribution to it.
- Bucephalus355 8y ago
  I don’t think it’s slanted as much as it’s just a shallow analysis. Obviously there are the surface indicators of truth (a statistic here, a fact there, a nice quote from somebody), but big picture, the issue is not “is this Trump guy a good tinkerer economist/engineer of the US stock market”, but how the bipartisan monopoly of power in Washington has stabbed the working class in the back at every turn. The big clue that the author would never understand this was his conflating of Koch and Trump. That would be like saying Shite and Sunni Muslims are the same. It’s an incredible cultural oversight. A good example of btw of this “stab you in the back” elite is Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. For all her work promoting freedom and women’s rights, the network marketing scam company Herbalife paid her $6 million to promote increased legalization of its products. It’s a scam company that preys on the poor. http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04/herbalife-useful-idiot-madeleine.html?m=1 http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04...
  - aerotwelve 8y ago
    I don't want to get into a political grudge match here, but I wouldn't say that Trump and Koch are polar opposites by any means. Trump's tax bill was a Cato (Koch funded) Institute special. If it turned out David Koch himself wrote it, I wouldn't be surprised. The ALEC club may not like Trump's views on immigration or tariffs, but they're in perfect sync when it comes to more or less every other economic issue. And the administration's energy policy is another massive win for them as well.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Truth on such matters gets you downvotes!
- delbel 8y ago
  I get upset when my comments aren't downvoted here because of that
delbel 8y ago
You have to put your self in these peoples shoes -- for the past 10 years, under Obama, they have been lying through their teeth about an economic recovery that never happened. Now that it is actually happening, they don't know what to do. Also some of these people, including all of millenniums, have never even experience working during a time where america has economically prospered. This is totally new to them, on top of that, they have no skills to offer so it places them at a disadvantage. They spent the beginning of their career underemployeed or not employeed at all. Have you tried hiring a millennium? they have no work ethics. The ones that do are worth high wages because of the shortages. Now the economy is turning around, employers are hiring them anyway because they have no choice.
- sctb 8y ago
  Could you please not post unsubstantively like this? We can't learn anything from it and that's what we're here for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - delbel 8y ago
    So whatever happened to the people here who doxed me, and threaten to burn down my house with a forest fire, and was up voted to the top? You guys did nothing when I complained. Somebody did start a forest fire near my house we were at level 2 evacuation for months.
    - sctb 8y ago
      I'm sorry but I don't know anything about that. The best way to reach us is hn@ycombinator.com. We don't see everything on the site.

Bucephalus355 8y ago

I think it would be unusual to see wage gains. Wage gains at this point would occur when labor pressures / basically existentially threatens capital, and probably nothing else. We don’t see a lot of labor pressure; there is no organized labor movement left anymore. There has been more and more talk about developers unionizing, although less about money and more about ethics (e.g. the AI stuff with Google). I say that to suggest we might see other areas unionize, and obviously they will demand more money, and then wages will rise. Unfortunately, the catalyst for pressure on capital / resurrection of labor power might be a “more-severe-than-2008” style depression. Because even if wages aren’t rising now, things are kind-of-sort-of good / not terrible for a lot of people. I think most people would be scared to risk it if life is bearable. Such a recession (if it occurs) would undoubtedly strip away any of the defenses of the ruling classes that remained after 2008 (and have slowly been hammered at ever since), so the ppl with the power will be weak and those with the demands will be extraordinarily motivated and with nothing to lose.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
arkades 8y ago
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/13/a-minimum-wage-worker-cant-afford-a-2-bedroom-apartment-anywhere-in-the-u-s/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/13/a-min... Most minimum wage workers can’t afford a 1br apartment in most of the country. “Kind of sort of not terrible” may actually be a high target to aim for.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  One of the surprising things about poverty statistics is that you find that most people classified as living in poverty are families, because your expenses go up drastically. Many young people - eg those making minimum wage - live with roommates or in studio apartments and don't really feel significantly disadvantaged by the fact that they can't afford a 1br apartment. I say this not to say that everyone is doing fine, but that the details can matter a lot. On a different note, for a fixed amount of housing stock, it is a purely positional good, you can't improve the number of people who can afford a 1br by simply paying people more, you have to build more, or enforce strict rent controls which makes it not a problem of income, but one of luck and inevitably corruption.

bcheung 8y ago

> There is essentially no evidence that the president’s tax cuts (his sole piece of major economic legislation) did anything to significantly improve America’s macroeconomic performance. This is probably true. But there's also no evidence to support that it hurt either. It's quite disingenuous and misleading to make such claims when there hasn't even been a single year of tax filings since the new tax policies have taken effect. Policies, especially tax policies, have long lag effects. Also, there are so many variables and other factors to consider that it is impossible to think so 1-dimensionally.

RangerScience 8y ago
> Policies, especially tax policies, have long lag effects. Which would imply that any gains (or losses) now would have to do with policy changes during the prior administration, supporting the author's point. So, alright, what's misleading the implication that they could have any significant effect by now.
- bcheung 8y ago
  Or the prior prior administration, or the prior prior prior administration. Or the result of economic policies from other nations, or any other countless factors.
elgenie 8y ago
The short term impacts aren't that difficult to calculate because a lot of tax receipts come in throughout the year, as do reports on real wage growth, unemployment, and corporate investment activity. The federal deficit for May was $146.80B, 66% greater than May '17. There are times for the federal government to run a deficit and inject money into the economy, but when it's done largely as a corporate tax cut in a time of full employment and record corporate profits (both indicating that businesses don't see many opportunities to reinvest in themselves), you'd expect to see that money go out as stock buybacks and dividends. And that's exactly what we've been seeing. There's no need to wait for long term lag effects if the short term investments that are the only plausible story for those effects materializing simply haven't happened. Yes, the stock market has been propped up, but it's with fool's gold; there are no gains in either productivity or national capital stocks (public or private). Meanwhile, increase in debt service as a percentage of the federal budget has been guaranteed. The burden of proof is on the tax cut authors to prove the short term growth that justifies it.

jeffbax 8y ago

The problem with articles like these is that they leave out the fact that non-wage benefits are consuming more and more of the compensation growth that may have otherwise gone into wages. Particularly healthcare costs… largely accelerated since the ACA, which NYMag supports wholeheartedly and is IMO a glaring omission in an article like this.

JamesBarney 8y ago
You'll have to cite evidence the ACA is accelerating it especially when the majority of health care economists disagree with that.
- dlp211 8y ago
  That and most wage workers are not part of the public insurance pool and are therefore mostly insulated from the ACA. Any increased costs due to insurance requirements or regulations should be stabilized by now for employer plans.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Unemployment sinks to record levels, is this celebrated? Not at this 'news' source. Here the argument is twisted to be about tangential issues. Odd, there was none of this a few years ago...

s73v3r_ 8y ago
Wages are most certainly not a 'tangential issue'.
Animats 8y ago
Maybe jobs are being created at the bottom. That reduces both unemployment and the average wage. Exciting new-economy opportunities, like delivering for Doordash or recharging Bird scooters, pay very poorly.
dlp211 8y ago
Or, and this may just be a crazy thing to think, unemployment is at historic lows so why aren't real wages rising is a valid question to be asking and explaining.
Retra 8y ago
There was plenty of this a few years ago. It's been pretty constant for the last decade at least.

Isamu 8y ago

I was just complaining about articles like this. If you are discussing a trend, you have to show a time series graph that demonstrates the trend you are claiming. Anything else is blather. There are three graphs, none of which are about wages. Call me crazy, but I would like to see a graph of, you know, "most Americans' wages" over the last few years if we are talking about the trend in most Americans' wages.

rdiddly 8y ago

Wishing for a version of this article for those who don't care about Trump or the debunking thereof.

wolfspider 8y ago

These were labor and manufacturing jobs that were created and actually the retail jobs took a hit according to this: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-new-jobs-were-created-in-these-5-states-2018-01-26 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-new-jobs-were-crea... If I read that article in combination with the one we're discussing it looks like there is a race to the bottom whether its temp jobs or contractors. For instance here in Florida we employ lots of people in the hospitality industry and in the outskirts of those bigger cities (Tampa Bay for example) average wages are so low its shocking. Just take a look some time, whether this is good or bad is up for you to decide. For me I think unless we subsidize education more and do it fast that will be the new crisis.

RachelF 8y ago

There is a feeling among some economists that some key data like inflation, wages and unemployment are fudged by government departments to make them look good. Things like the definition of "unemployment" have changed. If you work 1 hour a month you are employed. If you have been unemployed for longer than 3 months, you are no longer among the unemployed. The reasons cited by the officials always sound rational, but their net effect is to make government statistics look a lot better than they actually are. There is a discussion of this here http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... or here https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/big-mac-index-suggests-america-in-decade-long-depression-peter-diekmeyer-30-042018.html https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/big-mac-index-suggests-amer...