Economic

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has a Graphics for Economic News Releases page. The graph copied here is median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. Most of the patters are not a surprise, such as men earning more than women.  What may be new here is …

To address this question we start with a recent post by Kevin Drum (10/23/2020): Are Black Homeowners Suffering from Slow Price Growth? There’s no question that homes in majority-Black neighborhoods are undervalued compared to similar homes in majority-White neighborhoods, but do they also appreciate more slowly? The article goes through …

At the end of August I posted about the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S in the post How many people are employed in manufacturing? The Census Bureau has a recent post, Manufacturing Still Amon Top Five U.S. Employer by Adam Grundy (10/2/2020) that adds some context. Manufacturing is …

The Census Bureau post Even Short-Term Spells of Poverty Lower School-Aged Children’s Involvement in Extracurricular Activities by Brian Know (9/23/2020) quantifies the challenges of students  due to even temporary spells of poverty. The percentage of children ages 6 to 11 taking lessons was significantly different between those who were in …

The EPI article Racial disparities in income and poverty remain largely unchanged amid strong income growth in 2019 by Valerie Wilson (9/16/2020) reports the data from the Census Bureau on income and poverty in the graph copied here. …real median household income increased 10.6% among Asian households (from $88,774 to …

Elections seem to bring out various statements about manufacturing employment in the U.S. So, here is a review of manufacturing in the U.S. The graph here was created using FRED, which is a great resource for economic data. As a percent of all employees, manufacturing peaked in the early 1940s …

The article The Racial Wealth Gap is About the Upper Classes by Matt Bruenig (6/29/2020) on the People’s Policy Project explains. First the racial wealth gap is large: If you take the net worth of all white households and divide it by the number of white households, you get $900,600. …

The chart here comes from using FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data). Since at least the 1970s Hispanic or Latino (using FRED terms) unemployment was consistently between Black or African American and White and more recently slightly closer to White unemployment. For possibly the first time since the 1970s Hispanic or …

The EPI article State of Working America Wages 2019 by Elise Gould (2/20/2020) provides a detailed summary of wage growth. For example, copied here is the third of over 20 charts. Note that he bottom 10 percent is barely above 0 and only recently got there. A related fact from …

The Pew article 6 facts about economic inequality in the U.S. by Katherine Schaeffer (2/7/2020) provides the chart copied here (2017 data). One of the other facts mentioned in the article: In 1989, the richest 5% of families had 114 times as much wealth as families in the second quintile (one tier …