Frugality Goes Only So Far in Dealing With Inflation

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- I have spent most of my career communicating about personal finance, income insecurity and embedded inequality.

Given the viral reaction on social media, it's clear that a recent column of mine focused on specific ways households could combat rising prices did not fully convey my thinking on two of those broader issues. In trying to offer suggestions for people coping with inflation, I left readers with a “let them eat cake” (or lentils) impression, for which I and Bloomberg Opinion were lampooned (and worse).

I feel I should offer more context on why I spoke of eating lentils and deciding against pet chemotherapy — and, more important, of the bigger challenges facing the American working class.

Both those suggestions arose from my own experience. In the financially straitened house where I grew up, higher inflation meant less to eat and the need to find cheaper nutritious foods. More recently, it was my own family that had to weigh all the costs of treating an aging and beloved dog.

More generally, in writing specifically about ways for families at or below the national mean income of $50,000 to save money here and there, I was not forgetting the more fundamental challenge facing American workers: People need raises, and greater wherewithal to get them.

Spiking prices shine a spotlight on persistently low incomes. The problem is easily seen in the national wage and price data.

The federal minimum wage of $7.75 is, in real terms, at its very lowest, because it has fallen so far behind inflation. Last year, earnings rose 5.4% but inflation hit 7.9%. In 10 out of 12 sectors, raises failed to keep up with price increases. (The exceptions were construction and leisure and hospitality.)

With profits up and quit rates at near record levels, this would seem to be a good time to boost worker pay. But employers rarely do that voluntarily.

And while this may seem like a good time for a worker to ask for a raise, most can't credibly threaten to leave their jobs if they don't get one. Very often, depending on the location, there is only one employer that makes sense for a worker. What's more, corporate concentration has enabled employers to keep wages down, according to a Treasury Department report. Combined with the decline in unionization, employers' greater bargaining power has held American workers' pay 20% lower than it otherwise would be.

While others, including my fellow Bloomberg Opinion columnist Allison Schrager, would disagree, being in a union is the best way for workers to get a wage increase or an adjustment in hours and other benefits.

In mid-March, for example, 500 unionized workers at a Chevron Corp. refinery in the San Francisco Bay Area successfully struck to improve workplace safety and to push salaries up in line with inflation. In 2021, assisted by soaring pandemic–related demand, unionized Frito Lay workers negotiated an end to forced overtime and “suicide shifts” and an increase in pay. And in January, unionized nurses in Vermont received a 10% raise.

As a labor economist for the past 38 years — 13 at the New School in New York and 25 at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana — I have learned the ways in which social justice, shared prosperity and worker power are interconnected, and I have sought pathways to shared prosperity. I have looked for strategies to ensure that everyone has a decent retirement.

I worry that Congress will fail to see the need to index the federal minimum wage to inflation. I fear that the Federal Reserve will fail to see that today's inflation is caused by supply problems and try to fight it by crushing demand.

The current conversation about how to address rising prices must extend far beyond the need for frugal budgeting. Taming inflation in the long run calls for supply-side reforms significant enough to sustainably boost productivity. At the moment, though, workers face rising prices everywhere they look. They'll need to cut back, yes. And they also urgently need a raise.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Teresa Ghilarducci is the Schwartz Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research. She's the co-author of "Rescuing Retirement" and a member of the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute.