ECONOMY/LABOR/OBAMA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Worker pay gains in areas of the country that helped power Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory were substantially slower than in the rest of the country during the first year of his administration, new government data shows. In the 220 counties that flipped from voting for Democratic candidate Barack Obama in 2012 to Republican candidate Donald Trump in 2016, the average worker earned about $46,000 in the 12 months through March, up 1.9 percent from a year earlier. That compared with a 2.6 percent increase to around $56,000 for the country as a whole, according to a Reuters analysis of Labor Department data. The data, released this week in the department’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, highlights the difficulty of closing the prosperity gap for regions that have long struggled economically, and whose grievances were seen as a factor in Trump’s election victory. On Friday [9-7-28], the Labor Department reported separate data showing average hourly earnings nationwide rose by 2.9 percent in August from a year earlier, the fastest rate in nearly a decade. The next view of wages at the county level will not be available until December.”
–Jason Lange, “Where Trump flipped counties, worker incomes grow more slowly,” Reuters, Septmber 7, 2018 9:26 am