New statistics indicate that President Donald Trump's broadest base of support — the working class that keeps him from utterly cratering — is getting very little bang for the buck from the Trump economy. This despite a tax-cut package signed in December and sold as a way to spread prosperity to working families.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest real earnings report indicates that hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers — the 82 percent of the private sector workforce often called blue-collar workers — are down compared to a year ago. They're also down compared to January 2017.
How can this be with a populist hero in the White House? The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found white men without college degrees — people likely to be counted by the statistics bureau as production and nonsupervisory workers — approved of Trump's performance in office by a margin of 68 percent to 29 percent. The rest of the country disapproved by 60 percent to 38 percent.
Except for the fact that he promised better, the flatlined wages can't all be laid at Trump's feet. Real wages — that is, wage growth minus inflation — haven't moved significantly for decades. The real average hourly wage was $9.25 in 1982. In constant dollars, it's $9.24 today.
Compare that with the Dow Jones Industrial average, which stood at 1,046.54 at the end of 1982. It is over 26,400 today. Even adjusted for inflation, its valuation still has skyrocketed. In 1982, the average chief executive of a publicly traded company made 42 times more than the average worker. Today among Fortune 500 companies, that ratio is 347 to 1.
Shareholders and executives are scarfing up the gains that used to be spread more evenly among all workers. If this is how the world's leading capitalist economy divides up the money, something is seriously amiss, weighted to the plutocratic side of the scale.
Trump campaigned relentlessly as the champion of the forgotten worker, promising to bring back American mining and manufacturing jobs. And indeed, jobs in both the manufacturing and mining sectors have posted solid gains this year.
But despite 3.8 percent unemployment, wage growth for production and nonsupervisory workers remains stuck in neutral. Corporate tax cuts were a giant stimulus package that fueled a rocketing stock market. Some companies passed out one-time bonuses to workers, but very few raised wages and salaries.
If that Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll is to believed, Trump's base among white working-class males is sticking with him. They clearly have reasons other than pocketbook issues, though a trade war that costs jobs should change a few minds. But it's the wage numbers creating an opening for Democrats this fall. Sooner or later, money talks.
REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH
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