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May 26, 2021 - Politics & Policy

By the numbers: Declining wages for U.S. men

Hans Nichols
Reproduced from Guvenen, et al., 2021; "Lifetime Earnings in the United States Over Six Decades"; Chart: Axios Visuals
Reproduced from Guvenen, et al., 2021; "Lifetime Earnings in the United States Over Six Decades"; Chart: Axios Visuals

President Biden’s focus on creating more manufacturing and union jobs is propelled by the steady and persistent decline in lifetime earnings for American men since he graduated from law school in the late 1960s.

The big picture: The lifetime earnings of the median male worker declined by at least 10% for those who entered the workforce at age 25 in 1967, compared to those who entered the workforce at the same age in 1983.

  • That decline comes to roughly $136,000 (in 2013 dollars) in lost earnings during the lifetime of those workers, according to new research from the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago.
  • “The middle class built the country. And unions built the middle class," Biden said in his joint address to Congress in April. "It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom-up and the middle-out.”
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