The Economic Policy Institute recently published a series of reports examining wage stagnation in the United States over the last few decades, including nine charts examining the phenomenon from different angles and a breakdown of the major causes. In the latter article, EPI president Lawrence Mishel identifies at least five major causes, including the choice by macroeconomic policy makers not to make full employment a goal for fear of spiking inflation. He also looks at globalization, minimum wage policies, the erosion of unions, and “the superlative growth of compensation of CEOs and other top managers, and excessive salaries in the expanding financial sector.”
The nine charts include information on major shifts in CEO compensation, declining wages and benefits for young workers, as well as an update of EPI’s chart tracing back the unlinking of wages and productivity to 1973, with additional information on real wages: In addition, EPI published a deep dive on one cause, the decline of collective bargaining, with charts like the one below: Click here for more quick reads featuring interesting articles on philanthropy and impact investing.