Older Workers' Wages Are Growing - But Not Fast Enough

Owen Davis and Siavash Radpour

No 2021-04, SCEPA publication series. from Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School

Abstract: With inflation now a top concern among the U.S. public, workers face a race between wage gains and price increases. Older workers, despite receiving better raises than they have in many years, are losing that race. Like the rest of the labor force, older workers have benefited from significant increases in their hourly pay: in the past six months, median year-over-year wage growth averaged 3.9 percent for workers 55 and older - up from wage growth of 2.4 percent before the pandemic (Figure 1). Nevertheless, while pay is growing relatively quickly for older workers, their wage growth still lags behind that of mid-career workers (ages 35 to 54). And nominal wage growth - which is unadjusted for inflation - has been surpassed by a steep rise in prices over the past year, causing a decline in on Davis

Keywords: older workers; recession; COVID-19; coronavirus; downward mobility; poverty; unemployment; wages; involuntary retirement; retirement; 401k; Medicare; Older Workers Bureau; racial disparities; disparities; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J30 J38 J58 J60 J88 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age
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