Unparalleled Period of Declining Real Wages
These outcomes appear to be the most severe faced by employed workers over the past 25 years.
Unparalleled Period of Declining Real Wages. For workers who experienced a decline in their real wage in second quarter 2022, the median decline was 8.6 percent. These outcomes appear to be the most severe faced by employed workers over the past 25 years.
Low-income earners and people of color are being hit the hardest because food, rent, and energy make up a disproportionate % of their income. The gap between haves and have-nots is widening.
Most workers in the United States have seen their wages fall behind inflation in the past year, according to a recent report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
The Fed calculates that 53.4 percent of the American workforce saw their real wages decline between the second quarter of 2021 and second quarter of 2022, the Oct. 4 research report said. Real wages refer to inflation-adjusted wages.
“For the 53.4 percent of such workers in second quarter 2022, the median decline (that is, half of the declines were larger and half smaller) in real wage growth was 8.6 percent,” the report said.