SF Fed President: It’s ‘Not a Good Time to Be a Worker’ When Real Wages Fell 9% over Last Two Years

On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” San Francisco Federal Reserve President and CEO Mary Daly stated that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, it’s “not a good time to be a worker,” because people are losing purchasing power and “real wages, adjusted for inflation, the average worker in America has lost 9% over the course of the last two years.”

Daly stated, “I want to say this to all your listeners, we have a dual mandate that Congress gave us of full employment and price stability. We are clearly meeting our full employment goal. We have a historically low unemployment rate. Anyone who wants a job can get several of them. But people only have 24 hours a day to work and seven days a week to do it in. And what people are really struggling with is, even with that work, even when it’s so-called a great time for workers, they are losing value every time they go to the store. Their purchasing power is falling. Some little-known statistic that I think is really worth bringing up, real wages, adjusted for inflation, the average worker in America has lost 9% over the course of the last two years. That’s not a good time to be a worker, right now, things are out of balance and we are committed to bringing them back in balance.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett