In current days, US Democrats have fretted about polls displaying mushy assist for Vice President Kamala Harris amongst Black voters, and particularly amongst Black males — a improvement that some Democrats worry might imperil Harris’s probabilities to win in November.
On October 14, Harris launched an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” that her marketing campaign hoped would win extra assist.
US Congressman Byron Donalds, an ally of former President Donald Trump, mentioned there’s a purpose members of this core Democratic group ought to vote for Trump as an alternative.
“The large stat — and this occurred through the first Trump administration, no one likes to speak about it: Wages adjusted for inflation had been massively up below Donald Trump for Black males, for Black households, [and] for all Individuals,” Donalds mentioned on October 13 on the CNN programme State of the Union. “The wage hole that Democrats like to lecture about — the wage hole in 2019 was truly shrinking below Donald Trump’s administration, his financial insurance policies, his power insurance policies, and his regulatory insurance policies.”
Wages for Black Individuals and Black males did rise below Trump, however Donalds ignored that they rose 3 times quicker below Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, even after adjusting for a interval of 40-year-high inflation on Biden’s watch. Quite than narrowing below Trump, the Black-white wage hole widened.
“I can’t discover any method that means that [Donalds] is true,” mentioned Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Motion Discussion board, a centre-right suppose tank. “No economist is pointing to this.”
Donalds’s workplace didn’t reply to an inquiry for this text.
Inflation-adjusted wages for Black males rose below Trump, then quicker below Biden
First, let’s take a look at inflation-adjusted wages.
We turned to the usual metric for inflation-adjusted wages: the median ordinary weekly inflation-adjusted earnings for full-time wage and wage staff, age 16 and older. To fact-check Donalds, we checked out this statistic damaged down for Black Individuals total, Black males, white Individuals total and white males.
This information goes again to 2000, so we are going to evaluate the complete phrases of US Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama, Trump and Biden.
To match these presidencies, we decreased month-to-month volatility by averaging the quarterly figures for every president to supply an total common for his time period. To make the fairest comparability, we eliminated the info for the 4 quarters of 2020 and the primary quarter of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak interval. Throughout these quarters, federal stimulus checks spiked earnings for a lot of staff, which means that these months had been outliers from the patterns earlier than and after.
What do the numbers present?
For Black Individuals total, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings did rise below Trump. They elevated from a median of about $275 below Obama to about $281 below Trump, an increase of roughly 2 p.c. (The primary six months of Obama’s presidency included the Nice Recession, and far of his first time period coincided with a sluggish restoration.)
Beneath Biden, wages went up even greater. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for Black Individuals rose from $281 below Trump to $298 below Biden — a rise of about 6 p.c. The rise was about 3 times quicker below Biden than below Trump.
The identical sample holds for Black males.
For Black males, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings rose from a median of about $290 below Obama to about $295 below Trump, a rise of roughly 1.8 p.c.
As soon as once more, wage progress was greater below Biden. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for Black males rose from $295 below Trump to $312 below Biden, up 5.7 p.c.
The white-Black wage hole widened below Trump
How in regards to the wage hole — the distinction in wages between white and Black Individuals, and between white and Black males?
Utilizing the identical set of statistics, together with the cordoning off of the pandemic interval, we discovered the wage hole didn’t shrink, however widened below Trump.
Throughout Obama’s presidency, inflation-adjusted wages for Black Individuals trailed the equal determine for white Individuals by $74.5 on common. Beneath Trump, that common hole rose to $84.9.
Beneath Biden, the hole narrowed to $74.40.
The identical sample held for Black males.
Beneath Obama, inflation-adjusted wages for Black males trailed the equal determine for white males by $96 on common. Beneath Trump, that common hole widened to $105.30.
Beneath Biden, the hole narrowed to $92.80, smaller than below Obama.
Why have wages for Black Individuals, together with Black males, risen quicker below Biden? Some might have benefited from a extra basic pattern amongst all races of lower-income Individuals seeing unusually fast economic gains. With a low unemployment fee, staff have had better leverage to get raises from their employers.
Pandemic-era stimulus efforts, together with Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, “had follow-on results of giving staff extra choices and better particular person bargaining energy, which led to greater actual wages for these decrease on the earnings scale and could also be mirrored in Black males’s greater wages and salaries below Biden than Trump,” mentioned Calvin Schermerhorn, an Arizona State College historian who research capitalism and African American inequality.
Holtz-Eakin agreed with Schermerhorn that the wage positive factors for lower-income staff might account for the rise below Biden, although he added that comparable positive factors had been occurring in 2019 below Trump, when the unemployment fee was roughly as low and the labour market was equally tight. Nevertheless, that stopped in a yr or so with the pandemic, whereas Biden has had a number of years for this phenomenon to happen, magnifying the positive factors.
Our ruling
Donalds mentioned, “Wages adjusted for inflation had been massively up below Donald Trump for Black males. … The wage hole that Democrats like to lecture about — the wage hole in 2019 was truly shrinking below Donald Trump’s administration.”
For each Black Individuals total and for Black males particularly, inflation-adjusted wages rose below Trump — however they rose about 3 times quicker below Biden.
The white-Black wage hole, each total and for males particularly, didn’t shrink below Trump. Quite, it widened, earlier than narrowing below Biden.
In abstract, Donalds’s assertion was principally false.
