Americans may struggle for another five years as buying power shrinks more, report says

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Americans may struggle for another five years as buying power shrinks more, report says

Medora Lee
USA TODAY
Published 5:11 a.m. ET June 20, 2024 } Updated 5:11 a.m. ET June 20, 2024

If you found it increasingly hard to make ends meet over the past five years, it’s probably only going to get worse, according to new research.

Over the past five years, 97% of occupation’s salaries have failed to keep up with inflation, said personal finance platform Moneywise, which analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Federal Housing Agency (FIFA) and Redfin to find out how salaries have kept up. It found average salaries have fallen 8.2% as home prices rose an average of 56%.

And it likely won’t get much better. Of the 20 most common jobs in America, only one – waitstaff - is expected to see an increase in salary after adjusting for inflation by 2028, it said.

“If things don't change soon, the pain and pressure of inflation, rising cost of living, and soaring housing costs will lead to a significant reduction in purchasing power for Americans in nearly every occupation and industry,” said MoneyWise research analyst Nick Rizzo.

{snip}

[TexasDem69]

1. and this is why inflation matters

And is an anchor around Biden’s neck

[SeanHG]

4. Not sure how Dems

are gonna overcome that in '28. I, honestly, don't see Kamala being able to manage through that. Fortunately, TSF will be dead or incarcerated by then, but there's plenty of hateful, younger MAGAts who'll happily dust off Project 2025 (calling it Project 2029) and destroy this country for good. It depresses me immensely.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Why is this so different from other stories and statistics on the subject? For example:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/


Difference between the inflation rate and growth of wages in the United States from April 2020 to April 2024


"


or this: https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/

[imaginary girl]

5. Might be whose salaries they included

Are they looking at average worker pay or letting the highest paid workers skew the results?

[progree]

6. Production and non-supervisory workers have higher inflation adjusted earnings than pre-pandemic

so do all private sector workers

(production and non-supervisory workers make up about 80% of all private sector workers)

"Real" and "1982-1984 dollars" means inflation-adjusted in BLS parlance

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000032

This one was made a couple of weeks ago before the May report that came out mid-June, so it doesn't show the uptick in May

It's also one of all private sector workers, not just the 80% who are production and non-supervisory workers -- but the latter is very much the same shape. And it too is well above the pre-pandemic highpoint.


This has an explanation for its weird shape, and how the righties are making an enormously big hoo hah about it being down relative to January 2021 (Biden's inaugural month; brief 'splain: in the 2020 pandemic year lower income people were disproportionately laid off in larger numbers so that gave an artificial bump up to the average)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/111698101#post2

Real average hourly earnings:

. . . production and non-supervisory workers: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000032

. . . all private sector workers https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000013

[Blue Owl]

3. Somewhere a tRump-loving billionaire is laughing