[aetherson]

That's crazy talk.

It would've been arguably true in 2015 or so. But then we had years of high job growth, high median wage growth, and generally great economic conditions, right up until COVID, and then we actually recovered very quickly from COVID.

Like, is inflation high? You bet. Could we go into recession? We absolutely could. Did we have the last 8 years of costs going up and raises only happen to slightly offset cost of living? Absolutely not.

[_jal]

> high median wage growth

Wages are noticeably down since 2020.

WSJ and others prefer to report nominal wages (unless the article is about business costs), but you don't have to fall for the scam.

https://jabberwocking.com/wages-continue-to-plummet/

[aetherson]

Yes the pandemic has caused falling wages. You surely noticed that 2020 is kind of a weird year? And inflation is currently causing wages to fall further.

But 2014-2020 was very different.

[whimsicalism]

Can you explain how "[real] wages ... down since 2020" demonstrates "we have been in a recession since 2008"?

[rejor121]

For all job markets? Or just tech?

[whimsicalism]

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[aetherson]

Here's both real average hourly (red) and median weekly (blue) wages:

https://econbrowser.com/archives/2021/08/yet-more-alternativ...

Helps to show that it's not an effect dominated by the very rich, and thus throwing off the average, and also that it's not that hourly wages have stagnated but people work more hours -- since they're broadly similar, we should feel strongly that it is a real increase in "normal people's" actual wages.

There are more data available if people want to look for it. This is a surprisingly complex subject for something that initially sounds simple, so it helps to get a few different views into it, but the upshot is: since the teens, people have been paid more.

EDIT to add: People are just slow to update on this. If you look at the world in 2014, then it seems a lot more reasonable to be skeptical that normal people will ever get a raise. Then, you'd had basically 15 year of stagnation, before that a little rise, and then more years of stagnation at a lower level.

[aetherson]

The overall median for non-supervisory workers in the United States, not just tech. I'm sure that there is some industry that has had hard times in the last eight years, but overall we've seen growth.