Americans are working harder and producing more than they have in decades, yet those who are doing most of the work have the least to show for it.
Since 1973, productivity – how much workers produce per hour – has increased 73 percent, yet wages have risen just over 11 percent. That’s in stark contrast to the previous 25 years, when wages rose over 91 percent to keep pace with productivity gains.
If wages had risen in line with productivity gains made during the past few decades, an employee earning $40,000 today instead would be making close to $61,000. Instead, all of the economic gains are going to the top 1 percent of wage earners and to corporate shareholders, rather than the workers who produce the gains.No wonder more young adults are forced to live with their parents, delay marriage, and give up on looking for work. One-fourth of men between the ages of 25 and 34 earned less than $30,000 in 1975; last year, that surged to 41 percent, when adjusted for inflation.
Creating more jobs won’t fix this wage disparity – especially if most of the new jobs pay low wages.
Just look at what’s happened in New York City. The labor market there has recovered from the Great Recession much faster than the rest of the country – employment in the city is up 14 percent during the past decade, compared to 4.6 percent nationwide.
But most of the growth has been in jobs that pay low wages– about 56 percent of all private-sector jobs created in the city from 2009 to 2016.
Without unions, the manufacturing jobs that President Trump frequently promotes certainly won’t be the answer to stagnant wages. Grand Rapids, Mich., has more manufacturing workers than any other major metropolitan area in the country, yet it’s in the bottom five when it comes to income per resident. Non-union jobs in manufacturing are low-wage jobs.
Most workers have little ability to negotiate collectively for better compensation, with fewer than 11 percent of U.S. workers belonging to a labor union last year.
Until it becomes possible for more workers to form the unions they want and need, it will fall to lawmakers to address the wage crisis. As the New York Times outlined in a recent editorial, the government could raise the federal minimum wage, expand the number of workers who qualify for overtime, and provide tax cuts to workers at the low and moderate income levels.
Unfortunately, the current administration is pushing policies that will widen the wage gap even further – cutting taxes on the wealthy, stripping health insurance from tens of millions of Americans, and deregulating Wall Street.Unless we get serious about tackling wage inequality, more Americans will find it impossible to earn enough working full time to care for themselves and their families. That’s something that should outrage us all.
J. David Cox Sr. is national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, which represents 700,000 federal and D.C. government employees nationwide