Lower-wage workers experienced job losses in far excess of the proportionate shares: Employment change from 2019 to 2020, by wage level
Dollar wage bins | Employment change (actual) | Employment change (if proportionate) |
---|---|---|
< $6 | -54,472 | -14,171 |
$7 | -69,776 | -18,537 |
$8 | -91,223 | -22,567 |
$9 | -121,995 | -29,276 |
$10 | -135,924 | -34,956 |
$11 | -91,785 | -36,422 |
$12 | -80,890 | -39,527 |
$13 | -75,895 | -40,320 |
$14 | -44,688 | -37,802 |
$15 | -36,056 | -36,204 |
$16 | -53,998 | -34,757 |
$17 | -17,410 | -30,472 |
$18 | -1,205 | -28,002 |
$19 | 4,150 | -25,214 |
$20 | 12,730 | -22,676 |
$21 | -11,569 | -24,144 |
$22 | -22,293 | -20,084 |
$23 | -22,481 | -18,887 |
$24 | -25,022 | -17,463 |
$25 | -30,644 | -17,332 |
$26 | 4,719 | -13,485 |
$27 | 1,414 | -13,716 |
$28 | 1,812 | -12,593 |
$29 | 18,686 | -11,634 |
$30 | 15,316 | -11,249 |
$31 | 23,143 | -9,887 |
$32 | 7,814 | -9,310 |
$33 | 5,522 | -8,878 |
$34 | -7,188 | -9,495 |
$35 | 5,677 | -7,593 |
$36 | -13,563 | -7,962 |
$37 | 853 | -6,887 |
$38 | 7,308 | -6,502 |
$39 | 201 | -5,750 |
$40 | -7,780 | -5,910 |
$41 | 2,224 | -4,966 |
$42 | 3,205 | -4,705 |
$43 | -3,432 | -5,552 |
$44 | 11,717 | -4,669 |
$45 | 1,432 | -4,701 |
$46 | 4,944 | -4,098 |
$47 | 9,143 | -4,005 |
$48 | 4,002 | -2,988 |
$49 | -1,453 | -2,932 |
$50 | 3,014 | -2,505 |
$51 | 16,085 | -2,402 |
$52 | -4,932 | -3,076 |
$53 | 60 | -2,499 |
$54 | -18,196 | -3,283 |
$55 | 1,040 | -1,892 |
> $56 | 83,460 | -50267 |
Notes: Wages are adjusted for inflation using the CPI-U-RS. The bars represent how much average employment changed, on a monthly basis, for workers in hourly “wage bands” (i.e., levels) labeled by the midpoint value of the band. For example, the bar at $10 represents the monthly loss in jobs with hourly wages from $7.50 to $12.49 and the bar at $11 represents the monthly loss in jobs with hourly wages from $8.50 to $13.49. (The last bar represents jobs with wages $56 an hour or higher.) This smoothing of employment into wage bands was used to clarify underlying trends. The dots are provided as benchmarks—they show how many jobs would have been lost at each wage level if jobs had contracted proportionately across the entire wage distribution. If a bar extends to the right of the zero axis, workers at that wage level actually gained jobs. If the bar extends left of the zero axis but does not extend beyond its dot, workers at that wage level lost jobs but fewer than they would have had jobs been shed proportionately to how many jobs were in that bin in 2019. Finally if the bar extends to the left of its dot, workers at that wage level lost jobs at a faster rate than would have occurred if the losses were proportionate.
Source: Authors' analysis of EPI Current Population Survey Extracts, Version 1.0.14 (2021), https://microdata.epi.org.