The tenth is what Gordon Gekko, in the movie “Wall Street,” called a “$400,000-a-year working Wall Street stiff.”Then the stiff leaves for a while, maybe to answer a call of nature.
Because it’s most of the story of wages in the U.S. economy since Covid-19 struck.
In 2020 the average wage of workers who still had a job shot up, because those who were laid off were disproportionately low-wage service workers.
Then, as people resumed in-person shopping, started going to restaurants and so on, growth in average wages was held down because those low-wage workers were being rehired.
You need to look through these “compositional effects” to figure out what was really happening to earnings as that played out.
Persons:
Gordon Gekko, ”
Locations:
U.S