Inequality in the U.S. deepened in 2021, with the country’s top 0.1% experiencing a 18.5% jump in earnings from the previous year, according to a new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The bottom 90% of earners, meanwhile, swallowed an overall loss of 0.2% in inflation-adjusted earnings in the same period.
The employer-provided pension—monthly income from a company for which you no longer work—is a hoary part of the American past that never really existed for most of us. In 1970, at pensions’ peak, just under one in two American workers worked for an employer with the traditional retirement plan. (“A Timeline of the Evolution of Retirement in the United States,” Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center, 2010, scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/legal/50.) Today, the number stands at one in five in the private sector. (Monique Morrissey, “Private-Sector Pension Coverage Fell by Half over Two Decades,” Working Economic Blog, Economic Policy Institute, January 11, 2013, https://www.epi.org/blog/private-sector-pension-coverage-decline/.)
“Inflation can normalize without taking a hammer to the head of the economy,” Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, said Tuesday. But Powell—who has openly targeted workers’ wages as CEO pay runs rampant—brushed aside such arguments during his press conference Wednesday, claiming there is no “painless way to restore price stability.”
Jennifer Sherer, a senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Policy Institute — a think tank focusing on progressive economic policy — said that the position of fast food work was not immutable because workers’ wages and their standing in the economy are determined by political factors. “There’s this outmoded idea that somehow there’s a natural market that’s going to set the right wage,” Sherer said. “Employers intentionally find ways to boost their profits by suppressing wages, and policy choices have enabled and sort of abetted that wage suppression.”
Since Jan. 2014, 28 states and D.C. have changed their laws around minimum wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which has been tracking these changes nationwide.
Even when Black Americans do build wealth through homeownership, downturns in the economy wipe them out. According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 2005 to 2009, a time period covering the foreclosure crisis, Black households saw their median net worth fall by 53 percent, while white households saw just a 17 percent decline. And on the flip side, when the housing market is doing well, Black households tend to benefit less than white ones.
The alleged trend of “quiet quitting” grabbed media attention this year. But plenty of employees were, by official measures, working more than ever. The U.S. had an “exceptionally strong” job market in 2022, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, with 4.3 million jobs created through November. That was the second-best performance since 1940, he said, with the first-best being 2021.
A new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute looks at wage growth in 2021, using annual earnings from the Social Security Administration. They found that the top 1% saw average real wages grow 9.4% from 2020 to 2021, while the bottom 90% saw wages decline ever so slightly by 0.2%.