Team Biden has contrived something unusual in American macroeconomics: a (gently) rising tide in which powerboats sit lower in the water than skiffs. Growth isn’t great, but it’s been revised up by the Commerce Department for the first quarter of this year, from 1.3 to 2 per cent, and there are signs lower earners are getting the best of it. Rolling 12-month average wage growth for the fourth quartile of earners is 6.8 per cent compared with 5.6 per cent for the top quartile. A third of all layoffs (such as those announced by Meta, where median earnings are $296,000 a year) have been in the tech sector. The rate of increase in the number of people who used to make more than $125,000 a year now getting unemployment benefits is more than five times that of those making less than $50,000. And Wall Street traders’ bonuses were down this year by 26 per cent. There are caveats aplenty, not least that those bonuses still average $176,000. Also, the rich don’t just depend on wages; their stock portfolios are up 14 per cent year-on-year even if they only track the S&P 500.
