Americans’ Wages Dropping Fast in 2016

Federal data released Aug. 9 shows that Americans’ wages are dropping again, seven years after President Barack Obama declared the economy had recovered from the property-bubble — and three months before the 2016 election.

The dramatic drop was buried in an Aug. 9 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which said that officials have radically revised their prior claim that wages grew 4.2 percent in the first quarter, from January to March.

“Real hourly compensation decreased 0.4 percent after revision, rather than the previously-published increase of 4.2 percent,” the BLS admitted. Compensation also fell another 1.4 percent in the second quarter, from April to June, the BLS admitted in the same report. That’s 2 percent drop in wages since December...

Pay shrank 0.3 percent in 2013, rose a mere 1.1 percent in 2014, but rose a promising 2.7 percent in 2015, according to the BLS.

The wage drop is a potential p.r. problem for Obama, who has been touting the apparent rise in wages since officials reported that wages grew 2.7 percent during 2015.

In June, Obama cited the mistaken 2016 wage-growth claim while arguing the economy was finally helping ordinary Americans...

That wage-cutting labor surplus is hidden by federal unemployment numbers which suggests that only 1 out of 20 Americans are unemployed.  But the reality is that the many Americans and immigrants who do not have a full-time job are slyly discounted in the official reports.

“In addition to the [6.9 million recognized] unemployed, 28 percent (48.5 million) of working-age (16 to 65) natives were not in the labor force … This is much higher than the 25.3 percent rate (42.1 million) in the same quarter of 2007 and the 22.9 percent rate (35.7 million) in 2000,”  said a July study fom Steve Camarota, the research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, “

Overall, “55.4 million working-age, native-born Americans [were] without jobs in the first quarter of 2016, compared to 41.1 million in the same quarter of 2000,” he wrote.

In contrast, when immigration is kept low, wages tend to rise during economic growth. For example, wages rose sharply in the low-immigration decades between 1925 and 1969. Blue-collar wages also climbed in 1998 and 1999 when the fast-growing economy ran out of workers. Also, in Arizona, wages and research into labor-saving technology rose once many illegals were sent home in the mid-2000s...