The aggregate economic power of workers went up, because the actual number of workers went up by 20 million, or 14% of the workforce as of July 2020, and the number of unemployed or involuntarily part time went down over that period of time. There were a lot more wages being distributed per unit population, even if the real wages slightly decreased per worker.
I mis-spoke by saying “net economic power of workers” instead of “economic conditions for the average individual worker”. I have a feeling you understood what I meant anyway: People are hurting more and more.
economic conditions for the average individual worker
My point is that there are at least 20 million people who were not in that category in July 2020 who ended up in that category in April 2025. So the economic conditions for the average person who worked at some point in that 5-year period is going to be a big improvement as the employment rate increases.
So if you try to stabilize the cohort you’re looking at, whether it’s the 140 million who were employed in July 2020 or the 160 million who were employed in April 2025, then tracking the moving median needs to be accounted for.
A comparison between July 2019 and July 2020 makes this obvious. The weekly earnings shot up from $964 to $1016 (5% increase in a year that only saw 1% inflation), but nobody would consider that to be an improvement in conditions. Instead, many of the bottom earning workers just got laid off, making their conditions worse. If that metric isn’t a good standalone indicator of what average people are experiencing, it should be evaluated with the other metrics in mind, too.
The aggregate economic power of workers went up, because the actual number of workers went up by 20 million, or 14% of the workforce as of July 2020, and the number of unemployed or involuntarily part time went down over that period of time. There were a lot more wages being distributed per unit population, even if the real wages slightly decreased per worker.
I mis-spoke by saying “net economic power of workers” instead of “economic conditions for the average individual worker”. I have a feeling you understood what I meant anyway: People are hurting more and more.
My point is that there are at least 20 million people who were not in that category in July 2020 who ended up in that category in April 2025. So the economic conditions for the average person who worked at some point in that 5-year period is going to be a big improvement as the employment rate increases.
So if you try to stabilize the cohort you’re looking at, whether it’s the 140 million who were employed in July 2020 or the 160 million who were employed in April 2025, then tracking the moving median needs to be accounted for.
A comparison between July 2019 and July 2020 makes this obvious. The weekly earnings shot up from $964 to $1016 (5% increase in a year that only saw 1% inflation), but nobody would consider that to be an improvement in conditions. Instead, many of the bottom earning workers just got laid off, making their conditions worse. If that metric isn’t a good standalone indicator of what average people are experiencing, it should be evaluated with the other metrics in mind, too.