We at the Washington Examiner have illustrated the many reasons Bidenomics has proven a total bust across the electorate: Overall prices are up 18% since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, while wages are 2% below where we’d expect given the pre-pandemic trend. But sometimes, the best illustration is the simplest. To understand truly why Biden’s approval rating has tumbled to a rock bottom 33% according to ABC News/Ipsos, simply consider not how much the economy has failed to live up to the idiosyncratically American expectation of growth, but how much real wages have fallen.
Adjusted to the 1982 dollar value used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for standardization’s sake, real average weekly earnings were $399.88 when Biden took office in January 2021. By December 2023, real average weekly earnings were down to $380.59, or a real decline of nearly 5%.
For the worker who receives his paychecks every other week, that 5% real earnings loss is equivalent to about a paycheck and a half out of 26 each year being stolen by Bidenomics.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Earlier this month, Axios reported that Biden’s allies “see an opening” since annual wage growth finally hit the black late last year as inflation slowed. But for wage growth to reverse this 5%, not only does economic and productivity growth have to continue to stay strong; inflation has to continue slowing. Both of those metrics seem to be going in the wrong direction. Economic growth is anticipated to fall from a near 5% rate in the third quarter of last year to just 2% in Q4, and inflation actually began to rise at an annualized rate at the end of last month. Month-to-month, inflation has never really stopped.
Cynics have suggested that the Federal Reserve could (or even should) cut rates to juice the economy in the hopes of reviving Biden’s reelection odds. But given the 5% pay cut inflation has already cost the average American, Biden could not afford for the Fed to do so prematurely.
