Tag: Wages

A Paradox: U.S. Growth and Who Got Left Behind

~ Matthew Shaw ~ 8 Comments

By Matthew Shaw

Absent geopolitical or market surprises, the current U.S. expansion will by summer be the longest consecutive period of economic growth on record.  That’s the good news.  The toxic side-effect of all this prosperity:  how little of it is equitably shared and how angry that makes the majority of Americans ahead of the next election.  If income and wealth growth over the 2016-2019 period tracks 2010 to 2016, then the middle class will be no better off in 2019 than 2001 even with almost a decade of aggregate growth. Continue reading “A Paradox: U.S. Growth and Who Got Left Behind” →

Hard Work, Low Pay, High Costs: Life on the Ground in a “Well-Performing” Economy

~ Matthew Shaw ~ 2 Comments

By Matthew Shaw and Drake Palmer

Recent jobs data sparked excitement as news reports talked of how America is finally going back to work.  This is understandable optimism, based as it was on a concurrent rise in labor-force participation and a drop in the government’s preferred measure of unemployment.  Here, we assess whether the Fed’s “solid” and “very well performing” economy has finally allowed low-and-moderate income (LMI) households to share the prosperity rapidly pooling at the very top of the income and wealth distribution.  In short, and sad to say, it isn’t – hourly pay for low-wage/low-skill workers has declined in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) terms over the past four decades and is essentially flat since 2010.  As we noted in our last blog post, wealth concentration has soared since the financial crisis.  Even if a corner has now been turned for everyone else, it’s just a very tight one at the bottom of the equality canyon. Continue reading “Hard Work, Low Pay, High Costs: Life on the Ground in a “Well-Performing” Economy” →

How the Other Half Goes Broke

~ Karen Petrou ~ 4 Comments

By Karen Shaw Petrou and Matthew Shaw

In our last blog post, we laid out the most telling inequality-data points from an important new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis which for the first time runs from 1949 to 2016 and adds many critical equality measures.  These data show more decisively than ever not only that wealth inequality in 2016 is the worst since at least the Second World War, but also that this is due to who holds the assets that have gained the most.  Since which assets return how much is due now in large part to post-crisis monetary and regulatory policy rather than to market forces and broader macroeconomic trends, it’s post-crisis policy – not forces from beyond – that increasingly dictates U.S. economic equality. Continue reading “How the Other Half Goes Broke” →

Disquiet on the Home Front

~ Karen Petrou ~ 2 Comments

By Karen Shaw Petrou and Basil N. Petrou

On June 20, FRB Chairman Powell said, “Nine years into an expansion that has sometimes proceeded slowly, the U.S. economy is performing very well.”  Although Mr. Powell noted low labor participation, puzzling inflation, and problematic wage growth, he said that all will come right as long as the Fed stays the course.  No mention was made of unprecedented U.S. income and wealth inequality or of a housing market serving mostly the oldest, wealthiest, and most coastal among us.  Too bad – inequality and the impediments to effective monetary-policy transmission it erects are among the most important reasons that the nine years Mr. Powell cites have seen the slowest recovery in decades in concert with new threats to financial stability. Continue reading “Disquiet on the Home Front” →

One Small Step for Better Monetary-Policy Models

~ Karen Petrou ~ Leave a comment

By Karen Shaw Petrou

When I spoke at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on March 1, I pressed hard for less reliance on data that washes away growing U.S. economic-inequality gaps.  Happily, many at the talk readily concurred.  For those who disagree, take note: an amendment added on March 6 to a House Financial Services Committee budget statement for the first time demands that the Fed do better when it makes judgments about U.S. prosperity. Continue reading “One Small Step for Better Monetary-Policy Models” →