Misleading fact-checking claims about black wage gains under Donald Trump

In recent days, Democrats have worried about polls showing soft support for Vice President Kamala Harris among black voters, and especially among black men, a development that some Democrats fear could jeopardize her chances Harris to win in November.

On October 14, Harris released an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” that his campaign hoped would garner more support.

U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., an ally of former President Donald Trump, said there is a reason members of this core Democratic group should vote for Trump.

“The big statistic, and this happened during the first Trump administration, nobody likes to talk about it,” Donalds said Oct. 13 on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Inflation-adjusted wages rose massively under Donald Trump for black men, for black families, but for all Americans. The wage gap Democrats love to talk about: The wage gap in 2019 it was actually reduced under the administration of Donald Trump, his economic policies, his energy policies and his regulatory policies.”

Wages for black Americans and black men rose under Trump, but Donalds ignored that they rose three times faster under Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, even after adjusting for a period of high inflation in 40 years according to Biden. Instead of narrowing under Trump, the black-white wage gap widened.

“I don’t see any way that suggests (Donalds) is right,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. “No economist points to that.”

Donald’s office did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

Inflation-adjusted wages for black men rose under Trump, then more rapidly under Biden

First, let’s look at wages adjusted for inflation.

We used the standard metric of inflation-adjusted wages, the average weekly inflation-adjusted earnings for regular full-time workers aged 16 and over. To check Donalds, we looked at this statistic broken down for black Americans overall, black men, white Americans overall, and white men.

This data goes back to 2000, so we’ll compare the full terms of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, and Biden.

To compare these presidencies, we reduced month-to-month volatility by averaging each president’s quarterly numbers to produce an overall average of their tenure. To make the comparison fairer, we have removed data from the four quarters of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic. During those quarters, federal stimulus checks boosted earnings for many workers, meaning those months were outliers from earlier and later patterns.

What do the numbers show?

For black Americans overall, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings rose under Trump. They rose from an average of about $275 under Obama to about $281 under Trump, an increase of about 2%. (The first six months of Obama’s presidency included the Great Recession, and much of his first term coincided with a slow recovery.)

Under Biden, wages rose even more. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for black Americans rose from $281 under Trump to $298 under Biden, an increase of about 6 percent. The increase was about three times faster under Biden than under Trump.

The same pattern applies to black men.

For black men, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings rose from an average of about $290 under Obama to about $295 under Trump, an increase of about 1.8 percent.

Once again, wage growth was higher under Biden. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for black men rose from $295 under Trump to $312 under Biden, a 5.7 percent increase.

The black-white wage gap did not narrow under Trump; it widened

What about the wage gap—the difference in wages between white and black Americans, and between whites and blacks?

Using the same set of statistics, including closing out the pandemic period, we found that the wage gap widened rather than narrowed under Trump.

During Obama’s presidency, inflation-adjusted wages for black Americans exceeded the equivalent figure for white Americans by an average of $74.50. Under Trump, that average gap widened to $84.9.

Under Biden, the gap narrowed to $74.40.

The same pattern holds for men.

Under Obama, inflation-adjusted wages for black men trailed the equivalent figure for white men by $96 on average. Under Trump, that median gap widened to $105.30.

Under Biden, the gap narrowed to $92.80, smaller than under Obama.

Why have wages for black Americans, including black men, risen faster under Biden? Some may have benefited from a more general trend among all races of lower-income Americans seeing unusually rapid economic gains. With a low unemployment rate, workers have had more leverage to get raises from their employers.

Pandemic-era stimulus efforts, including Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, “had the knock-on effect of giving workers more choice and greater individual bargaining power, leading to higher real wages for those lower on the income scale and it may be reflected in black men. Biden salaries and higher salaries than Trump,” said Calvin Schermerhorn, a historian at Arizona State University who studies African American capitalism and inequality.

Holtz-Eakin agreed with Schermerhorn that wage gains for lower-income workers may explain Biden’s surge, though she added that similar gains were occurring in 2019 under Trump, when the unemployment rate was about so low and the labor market was similar. narrow However, that stopped within a year or so with the pandemic, while Biden has had several years for this phenomenon to occur, increasing gains.

Our verdict

Donalds said: “Inflation-adjusted wages rose massively under Donald Trump for black men… The wage gap Democrats love to talk about: The wage gap in 2019 actually narrowed under the administration of Donald Trump”.

For both black Americans in general and black men in particular, inflation-adjusted wages rose under Trump, but rose about three times faster under Biden.

The black-white wage gap, both overall and for men in particular, has not narrowed under Trump. Rather, it widened, before narrowing under Biden.

We rate the statement Mostly False.