Remarks
Blue Collars Have Outpaced White Collars in Pay—at First Glance
The numbers are skewed by the evaporation of the lowest-paying blue-collar jobs.
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“Low-wage, low-hours workers were hit hardest in the Covid-19 recession,” the Economic Policy Institute said in May, announcing its annual State of Working America report. OK, makes sense. But then how do you explain this chart?
The chart shows that in the two years from May 2019 to May 2021, pay went up nearly twice as fast for lower-wage workers as for higher-wage workers. That seems to undercut the EPI’s argument that Covid hit low-wage workers hardest.