Judged by its own standards, Bidenomics has so far been a failure.
The decline in median real wages over Biden's first two years explains why some Americans feel pessimistic about the economy.
‘B idenomics,” according to a recent document from the White House, “is rooted in the simple idea that we need to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up — not the top down.” Judged by its own standards, then, Bidenomics has so far been a failure. Economists and historians often look at real wages — wages adjusted for inflation. And by one measure of real wages, judged by his first two years in office, Biden is the worst president for America’s middle class in the last 40 years.
The chart above documents, for the first two years of each American presidency since Ronald Reagan’s, the change in median usual weekly real earnings of full-time wage and salary workers over the age of 16. All that is to say that the measure represents the inflation-adjusted earnings of a full-time worker whose paycheck sits at the middle of the income distribution. And that middle is precisely the place where, according to the Biden administration, the magic of Bidenomics is supposed to be found.
The plunge under Biden distinguishes him from Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Each saw real wages climb in his first two years. Its depth distinguishes Joe Biden’s tenure from those of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama. Each presided over a fall in real wages, but not as large. Because this set of statistics is available only as early as 1979, Reagan’s is the earliest presidency that can be included.
Some are wondering why murmurs of recession abound among the public. In the fall in real wages, you can see at least one reason. If you’re working like you used to, but your paycheck buys less than it used to, the mystery would be if you didn’t feel like the economy was in trouble.
The Biden administration, now touting the alleged success of Bidenomics, is trotting out statistics, such as spending on construction in manufacturing, that zoom in on narrow slices of the economy. According to the latest releases of data, however, touted by Biden, spending on construction in manufacturing amounts to only 4.1 percent of overall U.S. private-investment spending. It’s easy, though, to see why the Biden administration is choosing to zoom in. If you zoom out and look at the statistics on real wages, such as those in the chart, the jurors on Bidenomics would quickly reach a verdict.
That verdict, based on its first two years, would be of culpability for gross negligence, a charge based on the administration’s reckless disregard for the inflationary consequences of its policies, which are now gobbling up the value of the median worker’s paycheck. And that would be a verdict based only on the setting that the Biden administration has instructed the jury to consider when judging Bidenomics: the middle class.