> Wages have been mostly flat, so consumers have no extra money to engage in additional buying. Check out [1] and scroll down to Table A-7 (it's an Excel file)

> Wages have been mostly flat, so consumers have no extra money to engage in additional buying. Check out [1] and scroll down to Table A-7 (it's an Excel file). It's the real earnings data (in 2018 dollars), by gender, from 1960 to 2018 (though it's kind of spotty before 1967). What sticks out to me: * For men (looking at Total Workers), real earnings are currently around 10% higher than they were in the 70s (moving from low-$40K's to recently just past mid-$40K's, with some peaks and valleys along the way). Doesn't sound like much, but... * For women, earnings have roughly doubled in that timespan * The number of men in the workforce has increased by almost 50% * The number of women in the workforce has increased by almost 100% From a certain perspective, it's kind of amazing that real earnings haven't gone down significantly. [1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-266.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-26... (Census report that came out last month)