President Barack Obama has been touting wage gains for middle-class Americans, but new data shows that the small gains are being won by managers and supervisors, not by ordinary wage earners.
The blog Zero Hedge pointed out the wage discrepancy in the February 2015 jobs report released March 6.
Bureau of Labor Statistics datashows that non-supervisory workers — who comprise roughly 80 percent of company employees — stalled during the second half of 2014, as inflation of 1.6 percent ate most of their total 2 percent gain that year. Those gains, moreover, fell sharply to a 1.5 percent toward the end of the 2014.
But supervisors, including managers, saw their wages nudge up 3 percent in latter part of 2014.
That’s a good increase, partly because inflation dropped in late 2014 down to almost zero, and energy prices fell, despite Obama’s efforts to penalize Americans’ use
But wage gains for the one-in-five Americans who manage or supervisors other Americans are helping to hide the stalled wages for the other 80 percent of Americans working in the private sector.
Those supposed gains have been touted by Obama in recent speeches. ”In perhaps the single most hopeful sign for middle-class families in a very long time, wages are beginning to rise again,” Obama told a Feb. 20 meeting of Democrats in Washington, D.C.
He made the same claim Feb. 6, at a town-hall meeting with supporters in Indianapolis. “In the single most hopeful sign for middle-class families, wages are starting to go up again,” he claimed.
But many reports shows that ordinary Americans have seen their wages decline during Obama’s tenure, while Obama’s big-government policies have boost income for politically connected wealthy groups.
For example, the end-of-year bonuses for Wall Street bankers in 2014 amounted to $28.5 billion or roughly twice the total wages for 1 million full-time minimum-wage workers in the United States.
The wage problem has been worsened by Obama’s efforts to sharply increase the labor supply.
Since 2009, he’s handed work permits to an extra 4.7 million migrants — including tourists, students and illegals — above the routine annual intake of 1 million legal immigrants and 650,000 non-agricultural guest workers.
Under his November amnesty, he’s also trying to give work permits to roughly 5 million illegal immigrants now living in the United States.
Since 2009, Obama’s government has accepted roughly 8 million working-age immigrants, along with roughly 24 million Americans. That’s one extra foreign worker for every three Americans who turn 18.
