(The Center Square) — A new report argues that working families are doing better than they have for decades, and Pennsylvania is on the right track for the future.
“We have a strong economy, especially for working families,” Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center, said with the release of the center’s annual State of Working Pennsylvania report.
“Pennsylvania’s economy is experiencing steady and substantial growth, with output now significantly exceeding pre-pandemic levels, indicating a robust recovery,” Claire Kovach, Maisum Murtaza, and Herzenberg argue in the report. “Wage growth has outpaced inflation across most demographic groups and occupations, leading to real increases in purchasing power for many Pennsylvania workers.”
The trio credit the policies of the Biden administration for spurring “positive economic trends for workers,” pointing to the state’s GDP surpassing pre-pandemic levels, along with job numbers and a low unemployment rate.
“These policies were designed to benefit all Americans, and they worked,” Kovach, Murtaza, and Herzenberg wrote. “COVID relief — two big bills that passed under President Trump and a third enacted under President Biden with Democratic votes — generated rapid job growth and restored low unemployment.”
They also praised more federal spending and noted that inflation is returning to normal levels after peaking at 9% in July 2022.
“Federal investments triggered private investments in clean energy, for example,” Herzenberg said. “Those investments have kind of picked up where COVID relief policies have left off.”
Other changes, like a private service sector increase of 64,000 workers joining unions, also helped families, they argued.
Wages have also risen for black, Hispanic, and women workers, though they note blue-collar wages have stagnated except for construction workers in recent years.
“Pennsylvania workers are choosing to organize a union, join the middle class, and gain dignity and voice on the job,” they wrote. “Ten years of steady and modest gains do not make up for 40 years of job loss, downward mobility, and searing inequality.”
For the future, they argued for increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and strengthening “union-friendly policies,” along with adding labor and wage standards to federal spending projects.
The news should be a relief to Gov. Josh Shapiro and state lawmakers who’ve based the last two budgets around jumpstarting the economy to encourage young professionals to stay in Pennsylvania to support a swelling aging population.
If they fail, lawmakers worry the eventual “silver tsunami” will bring with it an economic death spiral near impossible to escape.
Inflation and the economy also dominate the national campaign trail, with candidates up and down the ballot promising to ease prices for consumers.
At the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22, three-term Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey told the crowd that rising prices on food and other necessities boils down to corporate greed.
The message comes less than a week after the Department of Labor admitted overestimating job creation by 818,000 through the year ending in March, setting off alarm bells about the health of the economy and the Federal Reserve’s impending decision to lower or raise borrowing rates.
Although revisions happen, the figure is one-third lower than the original estimate of 2.9 million jobs, raising eyebrows among critics who worry about Vice President Kamala Harris’s ability to tackle the massive inflation spikes that have happened under the Biden administration’s watch.
A recent report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that Americans’ personal savings rate sank to 3.4% in June, down from nearly 20% in January 2021. Real disposable income per capita also shrank from 14% to 0.51%.
Data published in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Quarterly Report showed that credit card balances increased to a record $1.14 trillion in the second quarter of 2024. Household debt also hit $17.8 trillion, while delinquency rates for credit cards, auto loans and mortgages also rose.
Casey said, however, that Harris and Democratic lawmakers will turn things around for taxpayers by supporting legislation to ban food price gouging and imposing harsher fines for corporations that cash in on crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Most companies are good companies,” he said. “It’s the food conglomerates that sit behind the supermarkets, the faceless wholesalers, they’re the ones who are extorting families at the checkout counter. This is greedflation.”
