Fact check: Are weekly wages in the US ‘lower than 50 years ago’?

No. Senator Bernie Sanders’s data relies on a blip in 1973. Economists show wages are actually higher now than 50 years ago.

In a November 10 appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, United States Senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders dismissed a question from host Dana Bash about whether Democrats’ poor showing in the 2024 election came down to messaging over policy.

“It’s not messaging, Dana,” Sanders said. He said the economy has been weak for average Americans for decades.

“It has to be put into an overall context where, in the last 50 years, if you could believe it, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages are lower today than they were 50 years ago, a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent,” he said.

However, this is a cherry-picked statistic. Most data show that US wages have gained ground above the inflation rate compared with five decades ago.

The measure economists most commonly use for inflation-adjusted wages, which they call “real wages”, is known as “median usual weekly earnings” for full-time wage and salary workers, age 16 and older. If the wage in this measure is higher now than 50 years ago, then wages have kept pace with prices, or exceeded them, over that period of time. If the wage in this measure is lower than 50 years ago, wages have lagged the rise in inflation.