Weekly Address: America’s Resurgence is Real

[JoePhilly]

6. If you understand economics ...

... you know that wages go DOWN during a recession because, with increased unemployment, you have more people competing for a smaller number of jobs. And you can see that decrease in the graph above.

And then ... only after you get UE down, usually below 6%, do wages start to rise again. Notice in your graph how wages drop after 2007. Although the recession technically ended in late 2009, UE at that same point in time, was over 10%.

Notice that as UE has fallen since 2009, the drop in wages stopped, and then flattened out starting in 2011. And the most recent bar, wages move up slightly. That can only happen when UE is low and companies have to compete for workers instead of the other way around.

So one can understand this economic reality, or one can be upset that Obama did not somehow change this fairly fundamental aspect of how the economy has always worked (which is pretty clear if you look at the other shifts in wage trends reflected in that same graph).