I’m having a little trouble finding something both new and interesting to write about today, but luckily for us all the Fed released its latest Flow of Funds report this morning. I may have some additional interesting tidbits to write about later, but for now here’s the basic distribution of national income:
Apologies for the chart being so busy, but the results are pretty clear. As you can see, corporate profits have recovered completely from their pandemic low and proprieters’ income has not only recovered but skyrocketed. Both are at or above their trendline growth from before the pandemic.
And then there’s employee compensation. That’s you and me and all the wait staff and retail employees and so forth who are still furloughed while we wait for the economy to open back up. Employee compensation has not recovered. It’s about $40 billion below its pre-pandemic trendline growth. But hey, what’s $40 billion between friends?
Answer: Quite a bit, actually! This is mostly income lost by those who have been furloughed, which amounts to something like 10 million workers. That comes to an average of about $4,000 each, which is why a one-off $600 stimulus payment is laughable to these folks. Conversely, an extra $300 a week for three months would make them nearly whole.
But as long as corporate profits are doing OK, Republicans just can’t be bothered with this kind of petty detail. I guess that’s why they’re the party of the regular guy, or so I keep hearing from them.
