United Auto Workers (UAW) members at the “Big 3” companies—Ford, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis—are poised to strike this week when their contracts expire September 14. It’s a historic and economically momentous time for this foundational industry in America’s industrial-technological base, and the outcome of the negotiations has potentially profound implications for how successfully we tackle the climate crisis.

The deep roots of the UAW’s current dissatisfaction share much with those taking labor actions to fight back after decades of rising inequality: The pay of typical workers has lagged far behind more-privileged actors in our economy, and the reason for this growing inequality is an erosion of workers’ leverage and bargaining power in labor markets. After surveying here the recent trends in auto industry wages, corporate profits, and executive compensation, it’s hard to blame workers for standing up now. It’s also clear that the companies have more than enough means to meet worker demands, remain profitable, and make the necessary investments to grow into electric vehicles. In fact, the “Big 3” companies can ill-afford not to recruit and retain talented workers in a rapidly transforming industry.

In the 2008 auto industry crisis, GM and Chrysler (now Stellantis) agreed to bankruptcy and government-supported restructuring. While this deal saved jobs throughout the auto sector, it came with steep costs to workers. Union workers agreed to a wage freeze, entry of lower-wage “tiered” workers, and other concessions affecting retiree pensions and health care benefits.1 In 2009, the companies suspended contractual cost of living adjustments and have not had one since. Since that time, average consumer prices have increased nearly 40% and autoworker wages have not come anywhere close to keeping up.

As unionized auto wages fell behind, so did non-unionized auto wages. This spillover effect whereby wage suppression of union workers filters out into the broader economy and damages the wages of non-union workers as well is a key dynamic driving U.S. inequality in recent years. Bureau of Labor Statistics data in Figure A show that production and non-supervisory workers across the broader motor vehicle industry, union and non-union, have taken it on the chin since the 2009 deal. Those working in motor vehicle manufacturing saw their average hourly earnings fall a staggering 19.3% since 2008, after adjusting for inflation. Including the broader motor vehicle parts industries—where outsourcing strategies have long compressed industry wage structures and thus didn’t have as far to fall—average earnings fell 10% in real terms.

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Economic relief measures enacted in response to the pandemic strengthened the U.S. social safety net and made a historic dent on poverty in 2021. New Census Bureau data show that the expiration of these key programs caused a significant increase in poverty last year, with the number of children in poverty more than doubling.

Bold policy initiatives such as economic impact/stimulus payments and the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) helped to shelter millions of people from poverty during a time of social and economic uncertainty at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the Census Bureau’s most accurate measure of poverty—the Supplemental Poverty Measure—showed that poverty declined by more than 30% between 2019 and 2021, reaching a historic low of 7.8% in 2021. During the same three-year period, child poverty declined by more than half, reaching a historic low of 5.2% in 2021. Importantly, gains during this period were observed across all racial and ethnic groups.

New poverty data for 2022 show that all these gains in poverty reduction have now disappeared. More than 40 million people in 2022 fell below the poverty line, an increase of over 15 million (see Figure A). The substantial weakening of welfare state programs that had protected families from economic deprivation in 2021 resulted in poverty increases across all major racial and ethnic groups last year, further deepening the disadvantages of historically marginalized individuals and families.

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Bold fiscal relief and recovery measures passed in response to the pandemic boosted the economy and helped millions of Americans avoid joblessness and poverty in 2020 and 2021. While the economic recovery has continued to strengthen since then, most of the government relief measures that helped workers and families weather the economic shock have now expired. Upcoming Census Bureau data on earnings, income, and poverty for 2022—released on Tuesday—will reflect how these policy choices impacted the economic well-being of workers, families, and children across the country. 

To help place the upcoming data release in context, we highlight key economic trends that have characterized the recovery since 2021. We also show how the current labor market is already on pace to becoming a better year for workers and families with expanding job opportunities and falling inflation. 

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Extraordinary fiscal recovery measures during the COVID-19 pandemic pushed U.S. public debt to levels rivaling its historic highs. Interest rates are significantly higher than they have been in over a decade. Many projections—including near-canonical graphs of debt as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) produced by the Congressional Budget Office—look extremely daunting, with debt ratios skyrocketing over the next few decades. In short, the benefits of measures to reduce budget deficits appear higher than they have in years.

However, without context, these presentations of debt can make the overall fiscal challenge look near-hopeless and create an environment where any measure to reduce debt seems necessary—no matter its other costs.

This post aims to do two things: (1) bring some context to the size of the policy adjustments needed to stabilize the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio (or just debt ratio); and (2) compare the size of this policy adjustment with plausible efforts to stabilize the U.S. debt ratio using tax increases alone.

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Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 187,000 jobs added in August. Read the full thread here. 

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The minimum wage is a New Deal era policy established initially through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). The original bill set a wage floor, instituted a 44-hour work week, and protected children from prematurely entering the workforce. Since its inception, the FLSA has been amended multiple times, with added exemptions and expansions specifying which groups of workers are covered under different aspects of the law. The latest proposed changes in Congress—the Raise the Wage Act of 2023—would increase the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour.

In light of this new legislation, we take a look back at the 85-year history of the minimum wage, how it differs in states and localities, and how minimum wage laws continue to have implications for racial, gender, and economic justice today.

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Inflation—both overall and core—has been steadily normalizing from its elevated levels of the past two years. Notably, this has happened without any pronounced slowdown in economic growth or any rise in unemployment. In short, the much-discussed “soft landing” seems to be happening. Many have declared this a highly unexpected development that was unforeseen by any economists. This is obviously not true—there have been plenty of us making the case that inflation would indeed likely normalize even without a rise in unemployment.

That said, it has been a highly unusual few years and no economic analyst has called every zig and zag of the inflation debate exactly. Given that this unusual period seems to be ending, it’s a useful time for a retrospective look at predictions I made. This retrospective can be divided into four categories:

• Unambiguously wrong: I predicted a relatively short and narrow burst of inflation, with very little spillover into faster nominal wage growth. Much of this was wrong due to new shocks occurring after this initial prediction, but not all of it.
• Unambiguously right: Higher unemployment was not needed to pull down inflation or even the pace of nominal wage growth.
• Probably wrong: I thought interest rate increases as fast and high as what was done over the past year would have appreciably slowed the economy far more than they have so far.
• Probably right: The role of generic macroeconomic overheating in driving inflation has been far overemphasized. Instead, the evidence is more consistent with a story of extreme shocks causing unexpectedly large ripple effects in the wider economy.
• Totally mixed: What role, if any, did higher interest rates contribute to normalizing inflation?

Below, I’ll say a bit more about each of these.

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The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law a year ago this week. It is widely seen as the crown jewel of the “industrial policy” agenda of the Biden administration. While no piece of legislation is perfect, the full potential of the IRA to deliver a radically better future is often underrated. In this post, we highlight many of the IRA’s huge steps forward and also talk about the unfinished agenda for securing faster, fairer, and greener growth in the U.S. economy.

Put simply, the IRA puts the U.S. on a path where meeting its global climate change commitments is within reach—commitments which would provide a genuine chance at securing a livable planet for future generations if they are kept. At the beginning of August 2022, there was no such path to secure this livable future, but there is now—and that is a mammoth victory.

The IRA was essentially a climate change bill that included extraordinarily important health and tax changes as ride-alongs. If the bill had only included these health and tax policy changes, it would have been eminently worthy of applause. The fact that these changes were essentially side-shows to the IRA’s climate impacts is one clue about how transformative it might turn out to be.

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Economist Larry Summers made waves with highly critical remarks about the Biden administration’s economic policies while attending a Peterson Institute for International Economics event on industrial policy and U.S. foreign policy last month. Although Summers expressed support for the trio of industrial policy bills that the Biden administration has passed—the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—he strongly criticized the “doctrines” (his word) of the Biden administration.

For now, we’ll set aside the question of whether supporting the administration’s concrete actions but disliking their rhetoric merits this level of blistering criticism. Instead, we’ll point out two things. First, Summers’s description of the aims of these industrial policy bills (and hence the “doctrine” of Bidenomics) is obviously inaccurate. Second, to the degree that the administration really has made an intellectual break with the past (including past Democratic administrations), it’s a welcome and necessary break. This is especially true regarding Summers’s claim that the pre-Trump approach to trade policy is a model that should be restored.

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