Grinch shows himself in stagnant wages

Wages in the United States are stuck in a Grinch-like grip that’s squeezing the value from workers’ labor.

As Americans shop for loved ones this holiday season, too many of them will be doing so on the cheap, or even resigning themselves to the giving of good wishes instead.

The reason for any stinginess in the season won’t be because these hard workers look to the Grinch for inspiration, but because wages are stuck in a Grinch-like grip that’s squeezing the value from their labor.

Despite what appears to be a roaring economy and a bull market, the American system is failing to live up to a basic promise to its workers.

The villains are all about us, from the marbled halls of elected office to the paneled walls of corporate boardrooms.

According to a new report by the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, median hourly wages remain stuck, lots of the new jobs coming online pay low wages and thousands of adults remain disengaged from the workforce.

Certainly, life in America is better than in many other countries, and many workers enjoy plenty of perks.

Still, the report’s findings about the American dream are dispiriting to say the least.

Coming as Republicans in Washington prepare to hand their rich donors huge tax breaks for Christmas, the center’s findings come as tear-inducing slaps of insult.

“We have another year of strong job growth in the state, and unemployment continues to drop. But the indicator of how the economy is performing for the majority of workers — wages — still isn’t moving,” Michelle Webster, the center’s manager of research and policy analysis, says of the findings.

In Colorado where the study was conducted, Webster pegged last year’s median hourly wage at $18.92, or about 4 percent lower when adjusted for inflation than in 2007, the last year of earnings before the ravages of the Great Recession.

Worse, 2016’s wage is 2 percent lower than the median wage, again adjusted for inflation, was in 2000. Nearly 20 years of work, and we’re going backward?

Meanwhile, the top 20 percent of earners saw wages grow by more than 6 percent, and the best-paid workers more than 12 percent.

Not that the news is all bad. As The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi reports, Colorado’s Department of Labor and Enforcement has seen modest growth in median wages over the last few months.

The department’s Ryan Gedney says more betterpaid baby boomers retiring and more millennials entering the workforce help explain median wage pressures.

And the growing cost of health insurance and other benefits for employees eats away at potential wage increases.

It makes sense to believe that historic low-unemployment rates would lead to rising wages.

But within that good news is more bad.

The kinds of service-industry jobs increasingly adding employees don’t pay so well, and Colorado’s skyhigh rental and housing markets — a result in part of bad public policies — have eroded self-sufficiency.

Back in 2001, 60 percent of those working in restaurants could cover basic living costs. According to the Center on Law and Policy’s new report, only 30 percent of them are able to do so now.

Let’s hope that Republicans are right to believe their tax bill will actually spur corporate America to inject some of the stockpiles of cash it’s sitting on and start improving conditions on the ground.

Because life in Grinch America is getting awfully hard.

— The Denver Post, Digital First Media

Despite what appears to be a roaring economy and a bull market, the American system is failing to live up to a basic promise to its workers.