Wages are increasingly falling behind inflation
The real wages of America’s workforce are falling rapidly.
Wage growth is falling further and further behind as inflation continues to spiral out of control, the Washington Examiner reported.
The average hourly earnings for fall employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by only 0.3% in April. This is lower than what was expected by economists, and according to data released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this past Fredy, nominal earnings have increased 5.5% on an annual basis.
This earnings growth rate is far below the rate of inflation. Although April’s inflation numbers are not yet available, the Consumer Price Index grew by 8.5% in the year ending in March.
Real earnings appear to be falling by multiple percentage points.
On Friday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers acknowledged the unfavorable growth rates and said, “While we do not yet have inflation numbers for April, it is likely that yearly nominal wage growth was slower than inflation.”
Despite this data not being available, it can be determined that inflation earnings were falling at the fastest pace in 40 years before April.
Jason Furman, the chairman of former President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a post for the Peterson Institute of International Economics that the White House’s Friday statement “suggests wage growth may be slowing.”
This means that nominal wage growth is slowing while inflation continues to accelerate.
Furman’s analysis presented an estimate of wage growth that adjusted for the fact that recently released hourly earnings figures released Friday are affected by hiring practices in the current workforce. For instance, wages might be artificially lowered if more low-income workers are hired back within a given month.
Essentially what this means is that pay rates are not growing fast enough to keep up with the rising costs of daily essentials and other expenses like gas, groceries, or rent.
Falling real wages help explain why voters continue to give President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris poor ratings on their handling of the economy.
A poll recently conducted by CNN indicates that Americans overwhelmingly have a dismal view of the economy and hold Biden accountable.
Only 23% of Americans rate economic conditions as “somewhat good” and only 32% of Americans think things in the country are “going well.”
According to CNN’s poll, only 41% of Americans approve of Biden’s performance as president with 66% of Americans disapproving of how he is handling the U.S. economy.
Elon Musk and SpaceX thwarted a Russian electromagnetic attack on Ukraine
SpaceX — a company founded and owned by Elon Musk with the express intention of colonizing Mars — successfully stopped a Russian electromagnetic attack in Ukraine.
In March, Musk’s company worked at a breakneck pace to shut down Russian efforts to disconnect Ukrainians from the internet by jamming the country’s access to its Starlink satellite constellation.
Starlink is operated by SpaceX and provides internet coverage to 32 countries. The constellation consists of more than 2,000 mass-produced small satellites that reside in low orbit and communicate with designated transceivers on the Earth’s surface.
At the outset of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, when it became clear that the Russian government was going to target the Ukrainian people’s ability to communicate, Ukrainian officials pleaded with Musk to intervene and provide them with relief.
Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk) 1645914834
Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, lauded SpaceX’s ability to turn on a dime and swiftly stymie Russia’s efforts to jam the Starlink satellite’s ability to provide broadband.
Defense News reported that Tremper said, “The next day [after reports about the Russian jamming effort hit the media], Starlink had slung a line of code and fixed it, and suddenly that [Russian jamming attack] was not effective anymore. From [the] EW technologist’s perspective, that is fantastic … and how they did that was eye-watering to me.”
Tremper noted that it would have taken the American government considerably longer to counteract the Russian electromagnetic attack than it did Musk’s company.
Tremper said, “We need to be able to have that agility. We need to be able to change our electromagnetic posture to be able to change, very dynamically, what we’re trying to do without losing capability along the way.”
Noting that electromagnetic warfare requires very finely tuned machinery and highly skilled operators, Tremper said the Russian invasion of Ukraine indicated how important it was to make sure that American personnel were properly trained in electromagnetic warfare operations.
He said, “It is a very hard problem, if you don’t have well-trained operators. The degree of coordination and synchronization of these types of operations is such that the undertrained operator will have a harder time pulling off those types of events successfully.”
This is not the only time that Elon Musk has thwarted the Russians’ plans in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
When the Russian government threatened to drop the International Space Station on the Earth by ceasing to provide it with resources and technology for propulsion, Musk said that he would keep the station from falling onto the planet.
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