Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?
The inflation spike of 2021 and 2022 has presented real policy challenges. In order to better understand this policy debate, it is imperative to look at prices and how they are being affected.
The price of just about everything in the U.S. economy can be broken down into the three main components of cost. These include labor costs, nonlabor inputs, and the “mark-up” of profits over the first two components. Good data on these separate cost components exist for the nonfinancial corporate (NFC) sector—those companies that produce goods and services—of the economy, which makes up roughly 75% of the entire private sector.
Since the trough of the COVID-19 recession in the second quarter of 2020, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%—a pronounced acceleration over the 1.8% price growth that characterized the pre-pandemic business cycle of 2007–2019. Strikingly, over half of this increase (53.9%) can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8% of this increase. This is not normal. From 1979 to 2019, profits only contributed about 11% to price growth and labor costs over 60%, as shown in Figure A below. Nonlabor inputs—a decent indicator for supply-chain snarls—are also driving up prices more than usual in the current economic recovery.
Child care and elder care investments are a tool for reducing inflationary expectations without pain
Inflation is by far the biggest economic concern facing the U.S. economy today. While job growth is historically rapid and survey evidence indicates that workers think now is the best time in years to find a good job, the inflation surge has kept this labor market strength from translating into higher wages and incomes for most households. The most well-known tool to restrain inflation—higher interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve—is potentially very costly if it leads to higher unemployment and a weaker labor market.
Given all of this, policymakers should look for any tool that can help restrain inflationary pressures without causing significant collateral damage. One such tool could be investments in child care and elder care. By subsidizing families’ use of child care and elder care and providing direct investments to providers, such investments could boost future labor supply by allowing working-age parents and children who want to look for paid employment to do so while remaining confident their family members are receiving care. Further, these investments can help dampen inflationary pressures—that rising wages could in theory contribute to—even well before they fully take effect.
To understand why, one must realize that developments in the labor market will likely determine just how easily (or not) inflationary pressures can be lowered in the next year or so. The inflationary spike that began in 2021 didn’t start in the labor market—it started in commodities and in supply-chain-snarled durable goods sectors where wage growth was actually slower than in other parts of the economy. But going forward, whether or not the Federal Reserve needs to start applying ever-stronger medicine (with deeply damaging side effects) to slow inflation depends on what happens in labor markets. Specifically, it depends on whether or not the initial inflationary shock leads to unsustainably large wage increases that push up inflation even further, leading to wage-price spirals of the sort that characterized the 1970s.
March jobs report shows strong growth as the labor market continues to recover at a rapid pace
Below, EPI economists offer their initial insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 431,000 jobs added in March.
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey: Job openings were little changed while hires edged up
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her initial insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for February. Read the full Twitter thread here.
The hires and quits rates have been moving in the same general direction for months. They both ticked up slightly in February. Workers continue to quit and get hired at fast rates in today’s economy, including the hires of workers returning/entering the labor market. pic.twitter.com/erHPkXA7aV
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) March 29, 2022
Biden can fix the anti-worker H-1B immigration visa scam
This is an excerpt from an op-ed in Jacobin. Read the full op-ed here.
Every April 1, the government decides, via lottery of all methods, which employers will get new visas for the H-1B, a temporary work program that has inflicted serious harm on millions of workers over the past three decades.
Enforcers take action to protect building superintendents and grocery and construction workers: A snapshot of state and local enforcement actions across the country
Series: The New Labor Law Enforcers
State attorneys general, district attorneys, and localities like cities are increasingly key players in protecting workers’ rights. This new series by Terri Gerstein provides snapshots of enforcement and other actions to protect workers’ rights by these new and emerging labor law enforcers at the state and local level. Gerstein is an EPI senior fellow and director of the state and local enforcement project at the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program, who has chronicled the growing influence of these new enforcers.
Recent cases brought by state and local enforcers include the recovery of $130,000 for New York City building superintendents, who were paid no wages at all, and a recovery of nearly $220,000 for workers in a Seattle specialty bar and grocery store based on minimum wage and paid sick leave violations. In addition, prosecutors on both sides of the country took action against contractors in the construction industry: The King County (WA) prosecuting attorney concluded a case in which a worker was killed in a preventable trench collapse, while the Manhattan district attorney indicted several interior construction companies and their owners for a conspiracy to evade more than $1.7 million in workers’ compensation premiums.
Here’s a snapshot of some enforcement actions in February and March 2022.
The New York Attorney General (AG) announced the settlement and recovery of $130,000 in a case involving building employers that failed to pay live-in superintendents any wages at all, and compensated them only through providing lodging (which was needed to perform the job).
The Biden administration can stop H-1B visas from fueling outsourcing: Half of the top 30 H-1B employers were outsourcing firms in 2021
Key takeaways:
- Through its flawed interpretation of the law and lax enforcement, the U.S. government has made the H-1B—the U.S.’s largest temporary work visa program—the “outsourcing visa.” New data show that half of the top 30 H-1B employers in 2021 were outsourcing firms that underpay migrant workers and offshore U.S. jobs to countries where labor costs are much lower.
- The 15 top outsourcing firms alone were issued 21,550 H-1B visas, 25% of the annual limit. Amazon, which is not an outsourcing firm, took the top spot with nearly 6,200 new H-1B workers, but the next four were outsourcing firms: Infosys, Tata, Wipro, and Cognizant.
- President Joe Biden should implement regulations that would prevent outsourcing companies from exploiting the program.
With approximately 600,000 workers, the H-1B is the largest temporary work visa program in the United States—an important program that allows U.S. employers to hire college-educated migrant workers. However, the H-1B program is not operating as intended and needs to be fixed. Instead of being used to fill genuine labor shortages in skilled occupations without negatively impacting U.S. labor standards, the latest data show that the H-1B’s biggest users are companies that have an outsourcing business model that exploits the program by underpaying skilled migrant workers. President Biden can and should implement regulations that would prevent such exploitation.
Building back better means raising wages for public-sector workers
Key takeaways
- Thanks to federal recovery funds, state and local policymakers have substantial additional resources to invest in their communities—and they should invest in raising pay for their own employees.
- Many of the workers providing public services are paid low wages. Roughly one-third of state and local government workers are paid less than $20 an hour, and more than 15% are paid less than $15 an hour.
- Black and Latinx employees are especially likely to be paid inadequate wages in the public sector. Investing in public services can promote greater racial equity in pay.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented a massive crisis that demanded a large collective response. At times, strong government action—mask mandates, expanded unemployment insurance, stimulus checks, free vaccines—saved lives and livelihoods. At the same time, past underinvestment in public services exacerbated suffering as hospitals were overwhelmed, unemployment claims processing stalled, and schools struggled to adjust to remote learning. Now, thanks to federal recovery funds administered through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021, state and local policymakers have substantial additional resources to invest in their communities, whether that means preparing for the next unexpected disaster or strengthening the services that help individuals and families through their own difficult times.
Investing in these services also means investing in the workers who carry them out, far too many of whom are paid low wages for their valuable work in providing public education, delivering health services and pandemic response, administering programs such as unemployment insurance, keeping our roads and sewers safe, and getting commuters to work. This blog post presents data quantifying and describing these public-sector workers and shows that Black and Latinx employees are especially likely to be paid inadequate wages.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is encouraging states and localities to use federal recovery funds with equity in mind. To advance this goal, states and localities should invest in improving pay for their own employees who ensure social needs are met, especially lower-paid state and local employees, many of whom are women of color.
One year in, the American Rescue Plan has fueled a fast recovery: Policymakers should use remaining ARPA funds in 2022 to make transformative investments that will build a more equitable economy
March 11 marks the one-year anniversary of the signing of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). This $1.9 trillion dollar relief package was both an emergency measure to help the nation through the worst pandemic in a century and an ambitious catalyst to jump-start efforts to redress the staggering economic inequalities in our economy. In its first year, ARPA helped the economy recover at a tremendous pace and aided working families through difficult times. In the year to come, state and local policymakers will have critical opportunities to use their substantial remaining ARPA funds to rebuild the public sector, support low-wage workers, and target systemic inequities.
ARPA supported a year of strong growth
A full labor market recovery took more than a decade after the Great Recession began in late 2007. Federal stimulus, needed to restart the economy in times of recession, was inadequate to circumstances throughout the 2010s. The slow recovery of the economy during the Great Recession also gave ammunition to political forces that supported austerity, the dismantling of labor unions, and the continued weakening of the social safety net.
With inadequate federal fiscal aid, many states faced large budget shortfalls in the wake of the Great Recession, and many state and local lawmakers responded by dramatically slashing budgets and cutting jobs. These cuts to state and local government had a disproportionate impact on women and Black and Hispanic workers, who are more likely to be employed in the public sector. This austerity was not only unnecessary, it also directly contributed to the slow pace of the economic recovery.
This long period of anemic growth also meant a lost decade of potential wage growth for low-income and middle-income workers, and racial employment and wage gaps continued to expand.
Along with COVID-related legislation like the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed in 2020, ARPA has gone a long way to making sure the mistakes of the Great Recession were not repeated. Tens of millions were kept out of poverty because of social insurance programs from CARES, ARPA, and other relief legislation. Despite a catastrophic cratering of the economy in March 2020—with more than 20 million jobs lost—the country is on track to return to pre-COVID levels of employment before the end of 2022 (Figure A).
Equal Pay Day: There has been little progress in closing the gender wage gap
March 15 is Equal Pay Day, a reminder that there is still a significant pay gap between men and women in our country. The date represents how far into 2022 women would have to work to be paid the same amount that men were paid in 2021. Women were paid 22.1% less on average than men in 2021, after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, and geographic division.
What’s particularly troubling is there has been little progress in closing the gender wage gap over much of the last three decades, as shown in the figure below. The regression-adjusted pay gap narrowed between 1979 and 1994—falling from a 37.7% pay penalty to a 23.2% pay penalty. But the entirety of the narrowing gap between 1979 and 1994 can be attributed to men’s stagnant wages, not a tremendous increase in women’s wages. Since then, the gap between men’s and women’s pay has narrowed hardly at all. In 2021, the pay gap remained at 22.1%.
Little to no progress in closing the gender wage gap in three decades: Regression-adjusted gender wage gap, 1979–2021
| Date | Regression-adjusted gender wage gap |
|---|---|
| 1979 | 37.7% |
| 1980 | 36.8% |
| 1981 | 35.7% |
| 1982 | 34.5% |
| 1983 | 33.4% |
| 1984 | 33.1% |
| 1985 | 32.8% |
| 1986 | 32.6% |
| 1987 | 31.9% |
| 1988 | 31.2% |
| 1989 | 28.6% |
| 1990 | 27.3% |
| 1991 | 25.6% |
| 1992 | 24.1% |
| 1993 | 23.3% |
| 1994 | 23.2% |
| 1995 | 24.1% |
| 1996 | 23.4% |
| 1997 | 23.8% |
| 1998 | 23.4% |
| 1999 | 24.0% |
| 2000 | 23.9% |
| 2001 | 23.2% |
| 2002 | 22.5% |
| 2003 | 22.3% |
| 2004 | 22.6% |
| 2005 | 22.1% |
| 2006 | 22.4% |
| 2007 | 22.8% |
| 2008 | 22.7% |
| 2009 | 22.5% |
| 2010 | 21.3% |
| 2011 | 20.7% |
| 2012 | 22.0% |
| 2013 | 21.4% |
| 2014 | 21.2% |
| 2015 | 21.7% |
| 2016 | 21.9% |
| 2017 | 21.6% |
| 2018 | 22.6% |
| 2019 | 22.6% |
| 2020 | 23.0% |
| 2021 | 22.1% |
Notes: Wages are adjusted into 2021 dollars by the CPI-U-RS. The regression-based gap is based on average wages and controls for gender, race and ethnicity, education, age, and geographic division. The log of the hourly wage is the dependent variable.
Source: Author’s analysis of Current Population Survey, Outgoing Rotation Group (CPS-ORG), 1979–2021, and Economic Policy Institute, Current Population Survey Extracts, Version 1.0.26 (2022), https://microdata.epi.org/, 1979–2022.
Over this period of pay gap stagnation, women have consistently increased their investments in education to increase their pay. Back in 1994, as progress toward closing the gender wage gap stalled, men were more likely to have a college or advanced degree than women. A quarter of men (25.1%) had at least a four-year college degree compared with 23.8% of women. By 2021, women’s educational attainment had surpassed men’s educational attainment. In 2021, 37.4% of men and 43.8% of women had at least a college degree. Unfortunately, even with these advances in educational attainment, women still face a stark pay gap. Women with advanced degrees are paid less, on average, than men with bachelor’s degrees.