https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1019342875841187840
I took a look at a little bit of data from bls and FrED and everything in that tweet is basically supportable enough that anybody dismissing it out of hand is showing their ass. I suspect that the real answer is somewhat more nuanced, but at the very least someone will have to take a few series out of government websites and do some math to get a better answer.
Here’s what I can deduce from like 20 minutes of looking.
- for non-management employees, hourly wages were up barely 1% in inflation adjusted dollars from the end of the recession through 2016. The latest employment report said wages were down 2% from 1 year ago. Net-net that’s roughly flat to slightly down per hour of work.
- but that’s an average, not a median. I don’t have the data but I suspect there is Bifurcation in pay changes were the most skilled or in-demand non-management employees are getting decent raises, since certain sectors (housing, probably health care) have workers shortages and high demand. That might mean fast wood workers (or whatever) are getting fucked.
- the overall proportion of the labor force that is working two jobs is down a bit from the recession, but has basically stayed flat since the recession ended. But again this doesn’t tell the whole story.
- the bls doesn’t calculate rates for the individual demographic buckets, they just report raw numbers, but I believe one could do it themselves if they cared to (I didn’t take the time). What I can say by looking at the numbers is that the raw numbers of people 25-34 and 55+ working 2+ Jobs has risen sharply since the recession, like over 10%.
- there are a few possibilities:
1) you are just seeing a demographic bubble and those numbers are purely a reflection of the relative size of Boomers and millennials to the size of the overall population but if you were to calc the rates yourself they are unchanged. The median age of the population continued Togo up during this time, so I’m not 100% how much I actually believe this.
2) something is happening where one or both of those groups is now forced to work two jobs (or in the case of boomers, forced to work when 10 years ago they would have just retired)
She might be wrong, but she definitely is not grossly wrong,and nobody that has had these hot takes looking at her statement has done the work to be able to dismiss her statement (at least as it is in that tweet) out of hand.
Edit: also she’s probably going to be the hottest congresswoman. We need a sexy latinx@ to replace no legs Tammy duckworth, *gag*. Tired of looking at her ghost cankles.
