Fact check: Did Black wages in the US rise ‘massively’ under Donald Trump?

In recent days, US Democrats have fretted about polls showing soft support for Vice President Kamala Harris among Black voters, and especially among Black men — a development that some Democrats fear could imperil Harris’s chances to win in November.

On October 14, Harris released an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” that her campaign hoped would win more support.

US Congressman Byron Donalds, an ally of former President Donald Trump, said there’s a reason members of this core Democratic group should vote for Trump instead.

“The big stat — and this happened during the first Trump administration, nobody likes to talk about it: Wages adjusted for inflation were massively up under Donald Trump for Black men, for Black families, [and] for all Americans,” Donalds said on October 13 on the CNN programme State of the Union. “The wage gap that Democrats love to lecture about — the wage gap in 2019 was actually shrinking under Donald Trump’s administration, his economic policies, his energy policies, and his regulatory policies.”

Wages for Black Americans and Black men did rise under Trump, but Donalds ignored that they rose three times faster under Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, even after adjusting for a period of 40-year-high inflation on Biden’s watch. Rather than narrowing under Trump, the Black-white wage gap widened.

“I can’t find any way that suggests that [Donalds] is right,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a centre-right think tank. “No economist is pointing to this.”

Donalds’s office did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

Inflation-adjusted wages for Black men rose under Trump, then faster under Biden

First, let’s look at inflation-adjusted wages.

We turned to the standard metric for inflation-adjusted wages: the median usual weekly inflation-adjusted earnings for full-time wage and salary workers, age 16 and older. To fact-check Donalds, we looked at this statistic broken down for Black Americans overall, Black men, white Americans overall and white men.

This data goes back to 2000, so we will compare the full terms of US Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama, Trump and Biden.

To compare these presidencies, we reduced month-to-month volatility by averaging the quarterly figures for each president to produce an overall average for his term. To make the fairest comparison, we removed the data for the four quarters of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak period. During those quarters, federal stimulus checks spiked earnings for many workers, meaning that those months were outliers from the patterns before and after.

What do the numbers show?

For Black Americans overall, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings did rise under Trump. They increased from an average of about $275 under Obama to about $281 under Trump, a rise of roughly 2 percent. (The first six months of Obama’s presidency included the Great Recession, and much of his first term coincided with a sluggish recovery.)

Under Biden, wages went up even higher. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for Black Americans rose from $281 under Trump to $298 under Biden — an increase of about 6 percent. The rise was about three times faster under Biden than under Trump.

The same pattern holds for Black men.

For Black men, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings rose from an average of about $290 under Obama to about $295 under Trump, an increase of roughly 1.8 percent.

Once again, wage growth was higher under Biden. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for Black men rose from $295 under Trump to $312 under Biden, up 5.7 percent.

The white-Black wage gap widened under Trump

How about the wage gap — the difference in wages between white and Black Americans, and between white and Black men?

Using the same set of statistics, including the cordoning off of the pandemic period, we found the wage gap didn’t shrink, but widened under Trump.

During Obama’s presidency, inflation-adjusted wages for Black Americans trailed the equivalent figure for white Americans by $74.5 on average. Under Trump, that average gap rose to $84.9.

Under Biden, the gap narrowed to $74.40.

The same pattern held for Black men.

Under Obama, inflation-adjusted wages for Black men trailed the equivalent figure for white men by $96 on average. Under Trump, that average gap widened to $105.30.

Under Biden, the gap narrowed to $92.80, smaller than under Obama.

Why have wages for Black Americans, including Black men, risen faster under Biden? Some may have benefited from a more general trend among all races of lower-income Americans seeing unusually fast economic gains. With a low unemployment rate, workers have had greater leverage to get raises from their employers.

Pandemic-era stimulus efforts, including Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, “had follow-on effects of giving workers more options and greater individual bargaining power, which led to higher real wages for those lower on the income scale and may be reflected in Black men’s higher wages and salaries under Biden than Trump,” said Calvin Schermerhorn, an Arizona State University historian who studies capitalism and African American inequality.

Holtz-Eakin agreed with Schermerhorn that the wage gains for lower-income workers may account for the rise under Biden, though he added that similar gains were occurring in 2019 under Trump, when the unemployment rate was roughly as low and the labour market was similarly tight. However, that stopped in a year or so with the pandemic, whereas Biden has had several years for this phenomenon to occur, magnifying the gains.

Our ruling

Donalds said, “Wages adjusted for inflation were massively up under Donald Trump for Black men. … The wage gap that Democrats love to lecture about — the wage gap in 2019 was actually shrinking under Donald Trump’s administration.”

For both Black Americans overall and for Black men in particular, inflation-adjusted wages rose under Trump — but they rose about three times faster under Biden.

The white-Black wage gap, both overall and for men in particular, didn’t shrink under Trump. Rather, it widened, before narrowing under Biden.

In summary, Donalds’s statement was mostly false.