【美国】美国经济中最被忽视的故事

The Most Underrated Story About the U.S. Economy

Income growth is faster at the bottom than at the top. Thank a growing economy, falling unemployment, and minimum-wage hikes across the country.

For decades, the story was simple: The gap between the rich and the poor grew ever-wider as incomes increased faster at the top than the bottom. The story was true, too. Wages have been rising faster for the top 5 percent than for the bottom 20 percent almost every year this century.

But in a remarkable reversal, annual wage growth has been greater (as a percent) for the poor than for the rich in the last few years. A new report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that wages grew faster in 2016 for the poorest quintile than for the richest. The trend was particularly pronounced for white workers. The poorest 10 percent of white workers collectively saw a 5.1 percent raise in 2016, twice as faster as the 2 percent growth among the richest decile percent.

This good news isn't just an artifact of a single think tank's artisanal number crunching. The Atlanta Fed has also found that the three-month moving average of wage growth reached a post-recession high in November 2016. Non-white incomes have recently been growing faster than whites', reversing yet another post-recession trend. And this might be the most surprising detail of all: Wages for high-school graduates are growing as fast as those for college grads for the first time since 1998, when the Atlanta Fed's dataset begins.

 

由于经济增长、失业率大幅下降，使得美国底层人士的收入增长速度明显快于上层人士的增长速度。

在过去的几十年中，上层人士的收入远高于底层劳动者的收入，因此富人和穷人之间的差距变得越来越大。在本世纪里， 5％的顶层人士工资增长速度远超过20％的底层劳动者。

但现在情况发生了逆转，过去几年中，穷人的年工资增长率（对照百分比）大于富人。据一家左倾经济政策研究所出具的最新报告种显示，2016年最贫穷的五分之一人口的工资增长速度快于最富有的人口，且这种趋势在白人劳动者中特别明显。 2016年，最贫穷的10％的白人劳动者的总工资增加了5.1％，与10%的顶层人士的2%工资增长速度相比，是其两倍多。

这个好消息不仅仅是一个机构随意编写的结果。亚特兰大联储还发现，在2016年11月后的连续三个月中，工资增长的平均数达到经济衰退后的最高点。非白人收入的增长速度高于白人，这扭转了经济衰退后的趋势。而可能是最令人惊讶的细节则是：高中毕业生的工资增长与大学毕业生的增长速度一样快，这是自1998年以来亚特兰大联储收集数据开始第一次遇到类似的情况

 

（翻译：刘筱晨）

信息来源：

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/wages-rising/519114/