In recent days, U.S. Democrats have expressed concern over polls showing weak support for Vice President Kamala Harris among black voters, especially black men, a development that some Democratic lawmakers believe will lead to weak support for Vice President Kamala Harris among black voters, especially black men. They fear it could jeopardize Harris’ chances of winning.
On October 14, Harris announced her “Opportunity Policy for Black Men,” which she hoped would garner more support for her campaign.
U.S. Rep. Byron Donald, an ally of former President Donald Trump, said there are reasons why members of this core Democratic group should vote for Trump instead.
“The big statistic, and this happened during the first Trump administration, is that no one wants to talk about it. Adjusted wages have increased significantly,” Donald said. CNN’s “State of the Union” on October 13th. “The wage gap that Democrats like to preach about, the wage gap in 2019, was actually shrinking under Donald Trump’s administration, economic policy, energy policy, regulatory policy.”
Wages for Black Americans and Black men did rise under the Trump administration, but even after adjusting for the period of the highest inflation in 40 years under Biden’s watch, Donald Trump’s successor It ignored the fact that wages rose three times as fast under President Joe Biden. Under the Trump administration, the wage gap between blacks and whites has widened rather than narrowed.
“I don’t see any way to suggest that (Donald) is right,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right think tank American Action Forum. “No economist is pointing this out.”
Donald’s office did not respond to inquiries for this article.
Inflation-adjusted wages for black men rose under the Trump administration, and will accelerate under the Biden administration.
First, let’s look at wages adjusted for inflation.
We focused on a standard measure of inflation-adjusted wages: the median regular, inflation-adjusted weekly wage for full-time wage earners and salaried workers aged 16 and older. To confirm the facts for Donald, we looked at this statistic broken down by Black Americans overall, Black men, White Americans overall, and White men.
This data goes back to 2000, so it compares the entire terms of U.S. presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, and Biden.
To compare these presidencies, we reduced month-to-month volatility by averaging each president’s quarterly numbers to create an average for the entire term. To provide the fairest comparison, we removed data from the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic. During these quarters, many workers’ incomes soared due to federal economic stimulus. This means that the month was an outlier from the pattern before and after it.
What do the numbers show?
For Black Americans as a whole, inflation-adjusted weekly income did increase under the Trump administration. That’s an increase of about 2%, from an average of about $275 during the Obama administration to about $281 during the Trump administration. (Obama’s first six months in office included the Great Recession, and much of his first term coincided with a slowing economic recovery.)
Wages rose even more under the Biden administration. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for black Americans rose from $281 under Trump to $298 under Biden, an increase of about 6%. Under the Biden administration, the rate has increased about three times as fast as under the Trump administration.
The same pattern holds true for black men.
Inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for black men rose from an average of about $290 during the Obama administration to about $295 during the Trump administration, an increase of about 1.8%.
Once again, wage growth was higher under the Biden administration. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for black men rose 5.7% from $295 under Trump to $312 under Biden.
Wage gap between whites and blacks widens under Trump administration
What about wage inequality, the difference in wages between white and black Americans and between white and black men?
Using the same set of statistics, including lockdowns during the pandemic, they found that the wage gap did not decrease, but rather widened under the Trump administration.
During the Obama years, black Americans earned an average of $74.5 less than their white counterparts after adjusting for inflation. Under the Trump administration, that average difference rose to $84.9.
Under the Biden administration, that gap has narrowed to $74.40.
The same pattern held true for black men.
Under the Obama administration, black men earned an average of $96 less than their white counterparts after adjusting for inflation. Under the Trump administration, that average difference widened to $105.30.
Under the Biden administration, that gap narrowed to $92.80, smaller than it was under the Obama administration.
Why did wages for Black Americans, including Black men, rise faster under Biden? Some may have benefited from a more general trend in which low-income Americans of all races are achieving economic advancement at an unusually rapid rate. Because unemployment is low, workers have great leverage to get raises from their employers.
Pandemic-era stimulus, including Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, has had the “follow-on effect of giving workers more choice and greater individual bargaining power, which leads to higher real wages for people at lower income levels.” , and that may be reflected in the wages of black men.” Calvin Schermerhorn, a historian at Arizona State University who studies capitalism and African-American inequality, said, “The Biden administration “We have higher wages and salaries than under Trump.”
Holtz-Eakin agreed with Schermerhorn that the increase may be due to higher wages for low-income workers under the Biden administration, but also in 2019 under the Trump administration. He added that a similar increase had occurred and that the unemployment rate was almost as low, as was the labor market. tight. But that stopped after a year or so due to the pandemic, whereas Biden took years for the phenomenon to occur and further expanded his gains.
our verdict
“Black men’s wages, adjusted for inflation, have increased significantly under Donald Trump,” Donald said. …The wage gap that Democrats love to preach about, the wage gap in 2019, actually narrowed under Donald Trump.
For both Black Americans overall and Black men in particular, inflation-adjusted wages rose under the Trump administration but rose about three times faster under the Biden administration.
The wage gap between whites and blacks, both overall and for men in particular, did not shrink under the Trump administration. Instead, it expanded before shrinking under the Biden administration.
In summary, Donald’s statements were mostly false.
