Yeah... This is an intentionally misleading study by a neoliberal think-tank that takes money from major anti-union corpos, the MIC, and investment bankers. Trying to sweep half a century of workers losing out behind fudged numbers to make it seem like wealth and income inequality, not to mention unfettered price-gouging isn't the problem that reality says it is.

Employment isn't at an all time high - unemployment is pretty low... but a lot of non-working adults or underemployed adults don't count as unemployed. A significant chunk of the population has just given up on trying to find a job.

According to the BLS, the median wage (as of May 2023) is $23.11. At a 40 hour work week, 50 weeks per year, that's a $46,110 annual wage.

Median rent for a 2 bedroom apartment (as of Nov 2023 is $1,904. That's $22,848 annually.

So rent is 22,848/46,110 = 49.6% of income. Traditionally, this would be closer to 30%.

Wealth inequality is the highest it's ever been. While I admire your optimism, the situation isn't that great for the majority.

So workers have caught back up to 1972. Hooray!

Too bad housing costs more than double now. Even after adjusting both to inflation $30/hr doesn't cut it in the housing market now.

https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices/inflation-adjusted-housing-prices/

Looking carefully at figure 5A, it's not as great as they want it to be. Even if the adjusted average wages have finally recovered after decades of low points, look at the rate before the drop and the rate leading up to now. And I will always question using just hourly wage as an indicator of how things are going when the first thing that happens when things tighten up is hours are cut. Still employed, still making X/hour, but net income is way down. Things are great. Sure. Then there's the specter of underemployment, and working multiple jobs to make up for low income, probably due to not enough hours from the first job. But that wage number is great, right?

Glad to see they've adjusted for inflation, have they also adjusted for cost of living?

Edit: For anyone (such as OP) who is confused by these terms:

The difference between inflation and cost of living.

This is great, and the economy is clearly way better than many of us feel in our wallets.

My problem with this framing is that the job market is just different today than it was a few years ago. In order to get paid what you’re worth, you basically have to be on the job market permanently. If you don’t hop from one job to the next, your wages will quickly stagnate. I like my job, and I get very small raises every year or two. My salary is reasonable, but not great, and the raises are usually 1-3%, barely inflationary. I know I could get way more if I put myself back in the market, but I don’t want to do that, because like I said, I like my job and have been there for 5 years. I don’t want to have to be a hustler to be paid what I’m worth, I want to be loyal to a company that pays me fairly. I probably need to get over this antiquated way of thinking, but just considering going back to selling myself on the job market gives me heartburn.

While there are multiple ways to measure employment, the best single measure is the percentage of the adult population with a job, known as the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP). However, with a growing portion of the adult population becoming retirees, this measure is confounded by demographic trends over longer time periods. Many economists therefore focus on “prime-age EPOP,” or the percentage of people ages 25–54 with a job, as a way to account for the aging of the population. A more sophisticated method is to adjust for both age and sex. Adjusting for age accounts not only for the increase in retirees but also the aging within the 25–54 bracket. Adjusting for sex is necessary to analyze previous decades, when a much smaller percentage of working-age women were in the workforce. After adjusting for age and sex, the percentage of the population that is working is roughly at its peak height in U.S. history. This is also true if one looks directly at prime-age EPOP.

If we stop using the metric we always used, and invent a new one that says things are great, then things are great!

What else do you need expect from a Podesta organization that claims to be progressive?

The whole point of it is to convince people neoliberals are just as effective as progressives could be.

That's why it's funded by billionaires and opposed healthcare reform and other things billionaires don't want.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_American_Progress

Just like with rightwing "think tanks" don't just pay attention to the name or blindly believe what someone has chosen for a label.