Raw Data: Incomes of Wage and Salary Workers

Here’s the latest from the president’s Council of Economic Advisers:

It goes without saying that this is misleading. After all, it’s from the White House. If you’re interested in actual wage growth—i.e., adjusted for inflation—here it is:

The last quarter of 2018 was pretty good, but it’s the only quarter of decent wage growth in the past year. Here’s the same chart for blue-collar (i.e., production and nonsupervisory) workers:

This is supposedly Trump’s base, and he’s done nothing for them. He talks a good game, but that’s all.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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