Comment on Shrinkflation is out of control
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 10 months agoInflation drives all the numbers up. If money inflates to half the value but you maintain the same profit margins, you'll make record profits despite the finances having functionally remained exactly the same.
Workers are also making record wages. It doesn't mean much if you don't consider how much the money is actually worth, as we've all been discovering over the last few years.
grue@lemmy.world 10 months ago
DarkWasp@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Workers are not making record wages, maybe CEOs and the upper middle class are but nobody else is.
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 10 months ago
Wage growth in the US has been most pronounced in the lower end of the market. Growth-oriented businesses like tech are a lot more sensitive to interest rate spikes, since their entire model is to borrow a ton of money to pay highly skilled workers a lot to "disrupt" an industry and achieve very rapid growth.
That isn't necessarily contradictory with still struggling, since inflation exists. If you suddenly make 10% more money but everything costs 10% more as well, you are objectively making record wages, even though your buying power remains the same. Per that report, inflation-adjusted wages have actually grown on the lower end of the job market, so the average low-wage worker's buying power has actually increased, but general statistics don't always translate over to real-life experience super cleanly, and of course, a slight improvement from a bad financial situation doesn't suddenly put you in a good situation.
Agent_of_Kayos@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I think that’s exactly it. I don’t know for sure, but these numbers may be average wages. And if that’s the case, having the top % or earners earn more while the bottome stays the same would still increase the average And would increase the divide between the top earners and bottom earners
variants@possumpat.io 10 months ago
so why not just lower the profit margins? also give me some of them record wages please, all I got was a bottle of champagne for all the work weve done and record profits but also raises in pay are frozen because of the turbulent times
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 10 months ago
Probably for the same reason you don't casually decide to go to your boss and say that you voluntarily want a pay cut.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages
Average hourly wage at the start of 2020 was $24. It's now $29, which comes to about $10,000 more each year, and is an increase of about 21%. That growth has been concentrated in the service industry, but the data is pretty clear regardless, and the general trend applies to basically all sectors. Inflation in that same time period is 18.1%, so it simply is a matter of fact that the average worker has greater buying power today than they did in January 2020.
That's an average, of course, and may not necessarily apply to you individually.
CaptObvious@literature.cafe 10 months ago
You got champagne? All I got was runaround, brand new policies pulled out of thin air, and creative counting to deny seniority benefits. Turns out, I’ve worked for the same place 30 years when it inflates their retention and longevity numbers for the oversight agencies. I’ve also worked there for only a year (started a new position last year) when it suits them to deny a published benefit. The completely mindboggling part? These two countings were in the same email.
jcit878@lemmy.world 10 months ago
you got champagne? I just got lumped onto more projects for no more money