Friday’s job and wage numbers show the Fed is winning, big corporations are doing great, and workers are losing ground.
by Sharon Kyle, LA Progressive
Job growth and wages are slowing. Employers added 223,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported Friday — lower than the average in recent months.
Average hourly wages rose by 4.6 percent in December, according to today’s report. That’s a slowdown from 4.8 percent in November.
All this is music to the ears of Fed Chair Jerome Powell because the Fed blames inflation on rising wages. The Fed has been increasing interest rates to slow the economy and thereby reduce the bargaining power of workers to get wage gains.

At his press conference on December 14 announcing the Fed’s latest interest rate hike, Powell warned that “[t]he labor market remains extremely tight, with the unemployment rate near a 50-year low, job vacancies still very high, and wage growth elevated.”
But aren’t higher wages a good thing?
The typical American worker’s wage has been stuck in the mud for four decades.
Most of the gains from a more productive economy have been going to the top — to executives and investors. The richest 10 percent of Americans now own more than 90 percent of the value of shares of stock owned by Americans.
Recent Posts
Buttigieg Has A Flip-Flop Problem That Could Hurt In 2028
September 2, 2025
Take Action Now Buttigieg, appearing on “Pod Save America,” avoided taking a position on whether the U.S. should continue with shipping arms to…
Support For Labor Unions Near Historic High As Trump Trashes Working Class
September 2, 2025
Take Action Now “Working people want unions and the numbers prove it,” says one labor leader. “While billionaires and their yes-men…
Into The Uncanny Valley: Human-AI War Machines
September 2, 2025
Take Action Now Are military AIs more ethical than biological soldiers?By Peter Byrne, Project Censored In 1757, British philosopher David Hume…
These Billionaires Have Already Spent $19 Million In A Bid To Defeat Mamdani
August 31, 2025
Take Action Now Michael Bloomberg and anti-DEI pundit Bill Ackman are just two of the many billionaires showering cash on Cuomo.By Mike Ludwig,…