No Silver Lining: Wages Fell While Inflation Soared This Spring
A rapid rise in prices over the past year has not been matched by wage gains, indicating American workers are losing ground, data from the Department of Labor showed Friday.
Median weekly earnings of the nation’s 113.6 million full-time wage and salary workers were $990 in the second quarter of 2021 , the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was 1.2 percent lower than a year earlier.
That compares with a gain of 4.8 percent in the Consumer Price Index over the same period.
That means inflation-adjusted wages are down six percent. Or, to flip it around, wage-adjusted prices are up six percent.
Either way you look at it, it is bad news for American workers.
Adding to the furstration of workers and employers, on average enhanced unemployment benefits pays around $620, which means many unemployed are receiving nearly 2/3 of the median weekly wage for people working full time.
In fact, unemployment pays significantly more than the median wage of $596 per week for women aged 16 to 24 and close to the $643 paid to their male peers. No wonder employers say it is hard to find new workers.
730K Migrants Apprehended This Year in Texas-Based Border Sectors
Agents in the five Texas-based Border Patrol sectors apprehended more than 730,000 so far this fiscal year. The apprehensions account for more than two-thirds of the more than one million migrants apprehended along the U.S. southwestern border with Mexico.
Border Patrol agents assigned to the five Texas-based sectors apprehended 732,573 migrants during the first nine months of Fiscal Year 21, according to information released on Friday in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Southwest Land Border Encounters Report. This is up from 155,246 apprehended during the same period during the previous year — an increase of nearly 372 percent.
The information comes as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis prepares to meet with Texas Governor Greg Abbott in Del Rio, Texas, on Saturday. DeSantis is one of several Republican governors who responded to Abbott’s request for assistance in securing the border as reported by Breitbart Texas in June.
“The immigration issue and the border issue is not just the number one issue of Texas, it’s the number one issue in America,” Governor Abbott told Breitbart in a one-on-one interview shortly before he announced the creation of a Task Force on Border and Homeland Security. “And so all of these other governors, they hear the same concerns that we hear about in Texas.”
The governor pledged the full resources of the State of Texas to stop the lawlessness along the southern border. He said they will use existing state laws along with the authority of the State of Emergency declaration made earlier this month to crack down on those illegally crossing the border can creating havoc along the way.
“The bottom line is, because of the current administration’s complete abandonment of enforcing the laws passed that were passed by the United States Congress, concerning immigration, there is an unprecedented increase in people coming across the border,” Abbott told a group of Texas sheriffs during a task force briefing in Austin on July 10. He concluded, saying, “Even though the federal government may have abandoned their responsibility, we have not.”
The governor created the task force to provide assistance to Texas border sheriffs, county judges, mayors, property rights organizations, concern citizen groups, and border-area prosecutors.
Members of the task force will include the:
- Office of the Governor
- Office of the Attorney General of Texas
- Texas Department of Public Safety
- Texas Division of Emergency Management
- Texas Military Department
- Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
- Texas Commission on Law Enforcement
- Texas Commission on Jail Standards
The CBP report above clearly illustrates the disproportionate burden placed on Texans as a direct result of the Biden administration’s changes in border security and immigration policies. From February, Biden’s first full month in office, until June, migrant apprehensions increased from 97,639 to 178,416 — an increase of nearly 83 percent. More than two-thirds of those apprehensions took place in Texas-based Border Patrol sectors.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
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