Upon the release of August inflation numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Keystone Research Center economist and executive director Stephen Herzenberg issued the following statement:
“The September update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that the U.S. inflation rate over the past 12 months ticked down to 2.5% in August. This compares to the 4.1% increase in average hourly earnings (of private non-supervisory employees) that BLS reported last week.
“The pandemic supply chain bottlenecks and the corporate price gouging that fueled inflation have abated—as Keystone Research Center, the Federal Reserve Bank, and many other economists predicted they would. Moreover, pandemic relief policies followed by investments in infrastructure, climate, and innovation have worked. Pennsylvania and the United States have a combination of inflation, low unemployment rates, and rising wages across the board as good as any we’ve seen since before 1973.
“In Pennsylvania and the nation, our work is not done. We need policies that will lock in shared prosperity. These include a higher minimum wage, stronger protections for workers’ freedom to form unions, and wage and labor standards tied to any subsidies for corporations to grow good construction and manufacturing jobs and reduce carbon emissions. We don’t need tax cuts for corporations and the rich and a hasty retreat from the pro-worker policies of the past several years.
With the right policies, Pennsylvania workers can finally wave goodbye to the wage stagnation and downward mobility of the past 45 years. With the wrong policies, working peoples struggles in our state and nationally will continue.”
In conjunction with this statement, KRC published a blog (accessible at www.keystoneresearch.org) with more detail on recent inflation trends. That blog draws also from The State of Working Pennsylvania 2024, KRC’s annual report on the Pennsylvania economy from the perspective of working families, released August 27.