US inequality gap is quietly getting smaller

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The US economy's brief moment of slowing inequality might be on its way out

paper, workers in the bottom 10% of wages enjoyed higher wage growth than those in the top 10% as of September 2022. Real wages returned to pre-pandemic levels for those in the bottom 10%, rising over 6% between January 2020 and September 2022, while top earners took a hit. Thenoted last year this trends stems in part from the"Great Resignation."

David Autor, Ford Professor in the MIT Department of Economics who led the study, told Insider the labor market is becoming more competitive for low-wage workers. Better-paying firms are often the more productive firms, he said, so with more competition, workers have more agency to move to higher-paying ones maximizing productivity.

"If competition for workers has increased, this isn't just good for workers, bad for employers," Autor said."It also means the labor market is operating more efficiently, that workers are working in more productive firms, so it actually increases economic output." strong jobs recovery and federal relief programs have given workers more bargaining power, allowing lower-wage workers to negotiate higher salaries or more easily leave positions in search of better-paying ones.

"What you really see in 2023 is that a lot of workers either left because of the pandemic or just refused to take those jobs, and the highest job vacancy rates were in leisure and hospitality," said Harry Holzer, John LaFarge Jr. SJ Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy."In terms of old-fashioned supply and demand, employers faced a worker shortage, and it put pressure on them to raise wages.

And while wage compression has helped narrow the gap between the bottom and top tiers of the vast majority of Americans who rely on employment for the bulk of their income, the very top of the spectrum, who instead make most of their money from investments in stocks or privately-held businesses, are

 

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