Comment by andrewmutz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewmutz | Hacker News Reader

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In inflation-adjusted terms, the lowest income americans have done the best over the last few years, with their wages rising 9%:

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/

> Between 2019 and 2022, hourly wage growth was strongest at the bottom of the wage distribution. The 10th-percentile real hourly wage grew 9.0% over the three-year period. When we look across the wage distribution, we see wage growth declining for each successive wage group until we reach the high-wage group. Compared with the 9.0% wage growth at the bottom, growth was less than half as fast for lower-middle-wage workers (3.9%) and less than one-third as fast for middle-wage workers (2.4%) between 2019 and 2022. Upper-middle wages grew even more slowly at 1.8% over the three-year period, while the 90th-percentile wage grew 4.9%—faster than the middle wages, but not as fast as the 10th-percentile wage.

And this is from EPI, a left-leaning think tank.

For context about just how well “the best” have done:

> The 10th-percentile wage in 2022 was $12.57, or $26,145 annually for a full-time worker.

9.0% real wage growth is still not remotely close to livable.

For real. Who the heck can live off $26k a year. That's peanuts.

If someone makes 25k and gets a 2.5k (10%) raise over a few years, they still aren't as well off as someone who made $200k in 2018 and got laid off and now only makes 120k.

I know you were responding to a comment about raises but seeing "done the best" in any context for the lowest earning workers feels odd.

Painfully tonedeaf comment. If you're at poverty level, not making ends meet, and inflation is 30% and your wage growth is 9%, you are falling behind. If you are above "making ends meet" and your income growth is only 3% but you are still "making ends meet", things are fine for you.

Inflation is absolutely decimating the lower half of the country. Your numbers are sophistry.

It's a 9% increase after adjusting for inflation. Actual wages increased by 9 plus the inflation rate.

100% don't believe it. And you missed the overall conclusion from your own link:

> While our analysis finds fast wage growth at the 10th percentile and wage compression within the bottom 90% of the wage distribution, highly unequal wage growth has led the very top to amass a greater share of the overall earnings distribution, contributing to worsening inequality.

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