Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 254,000 jobs were created in September and that job growth in both July and August was stronger than initially reported. This report was just the latest confirmation of the extraordinary strength of the U.S. labor market in recent years. This strength is what led to real (inflation-adjusted) incomes recovering far faster after the Covid-19 recession than they have following previous recessions. Even better, real wage growth has been by far the fastest at the low end of the wage scale, which has reduced inequality.
This labor market strength was also 100% a policy choice. Unlike previous business cycles, policymakers passed fiscal relief and recovery measures at the scale of the shock, and it proved that low unemployment could be restored very quickly after recessions so long as this policy lever was pulled with enough force.
Public appreciation of this accomplishment has been blunted by the outbreak of inflation in 2021 and 2022. While inflation has been steadily reined in since early 2023, the public’s perception of the economy remains soured by it. In a strict economic sense, the public mood seems odd: If real wages are higher and more equal now than at equivalent points in previous recoveries, why isn’t the public mood much better?
Policymakers who chose not to target significantly higher unemployment rates to tamp down inflation made the correct judgement that inflation was mostly driven by shocks that would fade even with labor markets remaining strong.
One reason put forward as to why the public dislikes inflation even if real wages and incomes are rising is pretty persuasive: Workers see wage growth as something they individually achieved while inflation was a policy mistake inflicted on them. This outlook is understandable, but it’s totally wrong.
Policy choices influence wage growth every bit as much as inflation—and sometimes more. When wage growth is slow, policymakers deserve blame—not workers. When wage growth is strong, however, it is because policy has done something right, not because workers spontaneously decided to become more productive or harder-working.
It is deeply damaging to U.S. policy debates that this is not more broadly appreciated.
For decades when wage growth for the vast majority of workers was anemic, these workers were often told it was because they weren’t skilled enough to keep pace with the demands of technological changes and globalization. This was false. It was intentional policy decisions that suppressed wage growth in those decades, policy choices meant to redistribute income upwards toward capital-owners and corporate managers.
In the past four years, workers have seen fast wage growth not because they are working more productively or harder—U.S. workers have always been the most productive in the world and have always worked hard. What changed was that policymakers decided to target a rapid return to sustained low unemployment, keeping unemployment below 4.5% for the longest stretch of time since the Vietnam War. In 2021, these tight labor markets were also accompanied by unprecedently large and expansive unemployment insurance benefits and cash transfers to households. These public supports gave workers more breathing room than ever before to be choosy about which jobs they took. These policy choices are why wages grew so fast so early in the pandemic recovery.
In fact, over the pandemic recovery, the policy fingerprints on fast wage growth are far clearer than those on too-high inflation. Inflation after 2019 was driven by two global shocks—the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Inflation accelerated everywhere in the advanced world, and the precise amount by country was wholly unrelated to policy choices they made.
The most common critique of policymakers is that the Federal Reserve should have engineered softer labor markets and tolerated higher unemployment to break inflation’s momentum. This thinking is wrong. There is a long and extremely well-developed literature nearly unanimously showing that higher unemployment has larger and more reliable effects in reducing wage growth than it does in reducing inflation.
Policymakers who chose not to target significantly higher unemployment rates to tamp down inflation made the correct judgement that inflation was mostly driven by shocks that would fade even with labor markets remaining strong. That is, they chose to not sacrifice wage growth (and the jobs of millions of workers) to pull down inflation.
In short, the inflation of recent years was—sadly—inevitable. The fast wage growth over the past four years was made possible entirely by proactive policy decisions. Getting this straight is crucial for getting better policy going forward. And it should make the public much more appreciative about the macroeconomic choices made since 2020.
