During
Thursday night’s Democratic debate, moderator Judy Woodruff asked former Vice
President Joe Biden: “What is your argument to the voter watching this debate
tonight who may not like everything President Trump does but they really like
this economy and they don’t know why they should make a change?”

To which, Biden replied, “Well, I don’t think they really do like
the economy. Go back and talk to the old neighborhoods and middle-class
neighborhoods you grew up in. The middle class is getting killed. The middle
class is getting crushed.”

I think that’s a problematic answer. The unemployment rate is the lowest since the Vietnam War, and some economists think it may headed toward the lowest levels since the Korean War. The prime-age employment rate — workers age 25 to 54 — is now back above where it was at the start of the Great Recession. And real wages are growing, especially at the bottom, thanks to the long expansion that just keeps rolling. A new CNN poll looking at public confidence in economy finds 76 percent think “current economic conditions are good” versus 67 percent a year ago.

Now I’m sure if Biden is the Democratic nominee, he will point out
that these positive trends began during the Obama-Biden administration. But if
the middle class is getting “killed” and “crushed” today, then it stands to
reason it was getting crushed during the previous eight years as well. If
inequality is a problem during the Trump years, then it was equally a problem
during the Obama-Biden years.

There is an argument to be made about geographic inequality. As The New York Times recently reported, “An unexpected surge in manufacturing jobs early in Mr. Trump’s term was never as pronounced in the Midwest as elsewhere in the country. Now, those states are struggling as the boom has faded. State-level data through October shows a steep drop in factory employment in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other states.” Yet even in those states, unemployment is really low.

Then again, the whole narrative about wage stagnation is dubious. As my AEI colleague Michael Strain has noted:

Median wages — for all workers, not just production and nonsupervisory workers — grew by 25% over the past three decades (using the PCE deflator). Wages for the bottom 20% of workers grew by more than one-third. … You might argue that what really matters is the flow of resources a household can use for consumption and savings, whether or not those resources come from paid employment. The CBO computes a comprehensive measure of income that includes (but is not limited to) wages, salaries and fringe benefits; capital gains and dividends; Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits; unemployment insurance, food stamps and federal tax payments. Using this measure, median household income grew by 43% between 1990 and 2015 (the last year for which data is available). Households in the bottom 20% saw their incomes increase by 62%.

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