US Workers Needn’t Be So Anxious About Their Next Paycheck
New research shows that income security has been mostly rising for the last seven decades.
Their incomes are less volatile than they may think.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
American workers are doing relatively well, but there is still a lot of anxiety about their plight. To many commentators, the US worker is suffering: Whether the culprit is outsourcing, trade with China, or the sheer daily turbulence of capitalism, that worker faces increasingly volatile income prospects. One political scientist even wrote a whole book about this worry.
Fortunately, the reality is much brighter. One study of this question, performed by a group of economists from Wharton, Stanford, the University of Minnesota and Brookings, suggests that income volatility has mostly been declining for the last seven decades — and especially for the last four. Whatever volatility risks remain, they used to be much worse.