Improving the Fortunes of America’s Working Class

Gary Burtless and Isabel V. Sawhill

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2021, vol. 695, issue 1, 331-344

Abstract: The prosperity of America’s working class depends on trends in their employment and earnings, but also on the social protection and income supplements they receive as a result of government policy. Since 2000, working-class wages climbed slowly once we account for the increase in consumer prices. Nonetheless, the total personal income of lower- and middle-income families increased considerably faster than their wages. As documented in the article, the income gains were in part the result of rising fringe benefits from employers and even more the result of rising government subsidies for health insurance and social protection. The article recommends a range of policies to increase the pace of working-class income gains, including macroeconomic policies that increase the duration of economic expansions, reforms in labor law to improve workers’ bargaining power, boosting the minimum wage, and revising occupational training of non-college-educated workers to boost their earning power.

Keywords: working class; earnings; social policy; macroeconomic policy; work supports; Great Recession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027162211036009 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:695:y:2021:i:1:p:331-344

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211036009

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().