Key takeaways:

• Real median wages grew too slowly and only in fits and starts over the last 45 years. This pattern was even starker for low-wage workers.
• Median wages grew only one-third as fast as economy-wide productivity growth.
• Wage growth was reasonably healthy during tight labor markets but almost zero in other years.
  • While tight labor markets persisted only in the clear minority of years since 1979, the last decade has been largely characterized by persistent low unemployment and this has been good for wage growth.
  • Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s chaotic and harmful policy agenda threatens these recent gains.

Our recently released State of Working America wages report includes new data on wages through 2024. Cumulative median wage growth was just 29% since 1979—or less than 0.6% per year on average.

This was far slower than the economy’s potential to deliver wage growth for all workers. In fact, as Figure A shows, median wage growth was only one-third as fast as how much could have been delivered to all workers by growing productivity. This disconnect between pay and productivity is why we now refer to the post-1979 trajectory of wages as “wage suppression” rather than “wage stagnation.”

Figure A

Too often, the bar for policy success on wage growth has been set at anything greater than zero. So long as literal wage stagnation was avoided, discussion about the urgent task of boosting typical workers’ wage growth could be forestalled.

This is too lax a standard for labor market success. Outside years of extreme crisis, capitalist (and even non-capitalist) economies in the modern world almost always grow in per-capita terms. The relevant questions are whether this overall economic growth could be faster and whether this growth lifts all boats near-equally or concentrates at the top. In the United States, overall growth has slowed significantly since 1979 and the fruits of this slower growth have concentrated significantly at the top. Relative to these key benchmarks, U.S. wage growth has been very poor.  

This slow post-1979 median wage growth happened in fits and starts, with gains only occurring in those rare years that saw tight labor markets. Further, even the potential to deliver faster growth for typical workers slowed significantly after 1979. For example, economy-wide productivity growth (value of output produced in an average hour of work in the economy) averaged 2.5% annually in the 30 years before 1979, but has just averaged 1.4% since.

Figure B illustrates cumulative median hourly wage growth between 1979 and 2024. Green segments of the line identify the periods when the labor market was tight and there was consistently healthy wage growth for workers at the middle of the wage distribution. Periods with little or no growth are identified in the dotted red line segments. If it hadn’t been for the strong wage growth from 1996–2002 and over the last 10 years, median real wages would have been flat over the entire post-1979 period. The underlying wage levels can be found in EPI’s new data library.

Figure B

In Figure C, we convert this wage growth into average annualized changes. On average, the median wage grew 1.7% annually in real terms during the 16 years when labor markets were tight but failed to grow at all during the other 29 years. During the periods when real wage growth averaged zero, the unemployment rate averaged 6.9%. Meanwhile, the average unemployment rate during the faster wage growth periods was 4.8%, even when including the huge spike in unemployment during the first year of the pandemic. In short, tighter labor markets deliver for middle-wage workers.

Figure C shows even more striking results for lower-wage workers during this same period. In tighter labor markets, low-wage workers experienced 2.7% real annual wage growth on average. However, low-end real annual wages fell 0.6% on average during the 29 other years. Without the stronger periods of lower unemployment, wages at the 10th percentile would have fallen outright. The last set of bars shows that median wages kept pace with productivity during years of tight labor markets but lagged far behind in other years. In other work, we’ve shown that accounting for non-wage benefits does not materially close this gap at all.

Figure C

The healthy wage growth of the past decade has been driven by a long stretch of low unemployment. Unfortunately, recent policy decisions are on track to reverse the gains made from maintaining full employment in recent years. Even with the strong economy the Trump administration inherited, their pursuit of a deeply chaotic policy agenda has led to a rise in economic uncertainty and brewing economic distress. Policy changes that strengthen workers’ bargaining power in labor markets are needed to not just keep pace with productivity growth but to regain some of the losses incurred by typical workers in previous decades.

The Trump administration’s unlawful removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to a prison in El Salvador—and willful defiance of court orders to facilitate his return—are demonstrating a flagrant disregard for due process that puts all U.S. residents in danger. The case has become the biggest test of the rule of law so far in the second Trump administration and illustrates the threats now facing all working people if the administration’s abuses of power are left unchecked.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Abrego Garcia—a union sheet metal apprentice and father of three from Maryland—on March 12 while he was driving home from work. Despite the fact that Abrego Garcia had a work permit and court-ordered protection from deportation to El Salvador, the Trump administration flew him there and put him in a prison infamous for inhumane conditions and violence—known as CECOT and operated by Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele—in defiance of an initial court order, along with 238 others. Three-fourths of the people on that flight had no criminal record, according to major media investigations. Irrespective of their individual backgrounds, every single person on the flight was illegally removed from the U.S. and imprisoned for life without an opportunity to have their cases heard in court.

The Department of Justice admitted in court that removing Abrego Garcia from the U.S. was unlawful (what attorneys for the U.S. have called an “administrative error”), but the Trump administration has refused to take steps to bring him home. In the Oval Office last week, Trump and Bukele even seemed to gleefully bond over Abrego Garcia’s fate, with Trump announcing his intent to send U.S. citizens to CECOT next.

Abrego Garcia has now become the human face of the Trump administration’s anti-worker weaponization of immigration enforcement to further authoritarian goals of crushing dissent by threatening political enemies with physical violence and disappearance. Allowing ICE to operate without regard for due process, court authority, or internationally recognized human rights is intended to instill fear and sow terror—not only in immigrant communities, but across all U.S. workplaces and institutions. As one of the many statements issued by national union leaders calling for Abrego Garcia’s return put it, “If this can happen to Garcia, it can happen to anyone.” 

Abrego Garcia is a first-year apprentice and member of SMART Local 100 (SMART is the acronym for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers union). As a 29-year-old father starting a new career as a sheet metal worker, Abrego Garcia represents the success of building trades union initiatives to expand access to apprenticeships and connect diverse communities across America to good union construction jobs, while working in partnership with community groups, employers, and state and local governments to meet growing demand for skilled workers. Abrego Garcia’s career path also reflects the construction industry’s longstanding reliance on immigrant workers, who currently make up a 36% share of U.S. construction employment.

Building trades union leaders are forcefully calling for Abrego Garcia’s immediate return not only because he is one of their members in need of protection but also because they are acutely aware of the implications his case has for all workers and workplaces in our country. No one is more familiar with what happens on some non-union construction job sites when unscrupulous contractors (or subcontractors) take advantage of workers who lack an immigration status or only have a temporary or precarious status. The administration’s recent moves to abduct workers on the job or on their way to or from work, to imprison workers despite their protective status (as in the case of Abrego Garcia), and to strip legal status from hundreds of thousands of migrant workers—including many union members—will increase workplace exploitation, make workplaces less safe, and make it harder for employers to recruit and retain the skilled workers they need across the country.

Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador 15 years ago to escape threats and extortion from the violent Barrio 18 gang and sought asylum in the United States. Deeming his life to be in danger if he were to return to his home country, a U.S. immigration judge in 2019 granted him a form of legal protection known as “withholding of removal,” which included eligibility for work authorization. In other words: He went through a process established in U.S. law, sought protection from persecution, and was eventually granted protection from deportation to El Salvador and a work permit. The Trump administration has shown that they have no regard for this legal process covering migrants and asylum-seekers; in fact, they want to do away with it altogether, but they can’t do it legally on their own. That’s why they’ve invoked the Alien Enemies Act—a law last used to authorize putting people of Japanese, German, and Italian nationality and descent into concentration camps during World War II—to try and justify mass deportations without due process.

It’s important to emphasize that Abrego Garcia is one of many workers and students who the Trump administration is illegally detaining or disappearing. We know more about his case because it is the first to have been considered by the Supreme Court, because he is a member of a labor union and a community organization that have pledged to fight for his release while providing support to his family, and because his Senator Chris Van Hollen took the extraordinary step of traveling to El Salvador to meet with him and confirm he is alive. Some reports indicate Abrego Garcia has now been transferred to a lower-security prison in El Salvador, likely because of the attention his case has garnered. But more than 200 others were sent to CECOT on the same plane as Abrego Garcia. We now know that most had no criminal record or only minor infractions, and that at least some had entered the country lawfully and were employed—but it’s doubtful that any of them will ever have their day in court. They have effectively been sentenced to death.

Increasingly, reports detail numerous cases of ICE using extreme and unprecedented tactics such as targeting individuals for exercising free speech rights or rights to advocate for better working conditions, and revoking the immigration status of those who are lawfully in the U.S. and removing them without any due process. This has included the wrongful detention of a growing number of U.S. citizens. Far from targeting “violent criminals,” the administration appears focused on targeting those workers and students who have most dutifully followed laws and procedures for attaining protected status and work authorization, and whose personal information and whereabouts are therefore easiest for ICE to access. These actions are also leading to egregious mistakes, like ICE sending letters to U.S.-born citizens telling them that their immigration status has been canceled and that they need to leave the country.

At this moment of constitutional crisis, it’s worth clarifying that Abrego Garcia and others have been abducted to El Salvador and imprisoned without due process—not “deported.” Deportation is a legal process. It’s when the government brings evidence to prove that someone does not have the right to be in the United States, and if an immigration judge agrees, then ICE removes and releases them in their country of origin (or a safe third country). Being present in the United States without authorization is in many cases not a crime—it’s a civil infraction. And detention in an immigration prison is not supposed to be punitive, at least if you believe what ICE says prominently on its own website, which specifies that detention is intended to be a momentary holding until a judge decides whether evidence shows someone should be removed from the country.

What a deportation should never be, if the U.S. government is following its own laws, is a sentence to prison, torture, and death with absolutely no due process and no hope of ever being released, and with no way to reverse course when a mistake has been made, even one that’s been openly admitted by the government.

The Trump administration could still move to legally deport Abrego Garcia if they believe they have evidence to do so. They would just need to return him to the U.S. and make their case in immigration court to challenge the protection previously granted to him by a judge or find a safe third country for him. Trump and Bukele’s refusal to bring Abrego Garcia back—after admitting that removing him was a mistake—only confirms that they know they lack evidence to deport him legally to El Salvador. Their attempt to consign him and others to life in prison without any hearing is intended to terrorize migrant and native-born workers alike across the United States.

Every member of Congress must insist that the Trump administration bring Abrego Garcia and others home now so they can have their day in court—or else let all U.S. residents know that if they too are snatched by ICE without warning on their way to work, no amount of evidence will protect them against the violent and lawless actions of a White House that no longer upholds the sacred constitutional right to due process.

President Trump has weakened the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by understaffing, underfunding, and restricting its work—leaving vulnerable communities at higher risk of environmental discrimination and racism. Within weeks of taking office, Trump revoked several key Biden-era executive orders on climate, public health, and environmental justice. While some of Trump’s actions have been reversed, his attacks toward the EPA remain unrelenting—continuing a pattern of sweeping environmental rollbacks that defined his first term. This time, however, his efforts are more targeted and dangerous, striking directly at the intersection of climate and race. Through data censorship and removal, the Trump administration is dismantling key tools for advancing environmental justice and protecting communities from environmental discrimination.

Research has played a key role in the environmental justice movement

The environmental justice movement began in the late 1980s when organizers and residents protested the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Warren County, North Carolina—the state’s most heavily Black-populated area. These demonstrations led the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice to publish a landmark study showing that minority communities were disproportionately targeted for toxic waste sites. Targeting these communities was not incidental—it reflected a deliberate strategy to place hazardous facilities in areas where residents lacked the political power or resources to resist.

As the study garnered national attention, the EPA established the Office of Environmental Justice in 1992. President Clinton followed by issuing Executive Order 12898 that directed federal agencies to develop strategies for addressing the disproportionate health and environmental impacts on low-income communities and communities of color. This executive order became a cornerstone of federal enforcement of environmental justice—until Trump rescinded it on the second day of his presidency.

To support the implementation of Executive Order 12898, the EPA later developed the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool (EJScreen), but Trump’s EPA removed the tool in early February. First released to the public in 2015, EJScreen offered nationally consistent data on 13 environmental burden indicators, alongside six demographic variables relevant to minority and historically marginalized communities. By combining environmental and demographic data, the tool generated Environmental Justice Indexes for each burden, helping to highlight areas of concern.

EJScreen played a key role in guiding the EPA’s development of policies and programs, while also empowering the public to conduct research and advocate for environmental and health equity. Since the removal of EJScreen from the EPA’s website, various organizations have worked to recreate the tool and host its data elsewhere; however, the tool will not be updated by the EPA, nor will it serve as a guiding tool for the agency.

The economic costs of air pollution

One of the environmental indicators available in EJScreen is potential exposure to fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5. This particle pollution is smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and originates from both natural and human-made sources, including indoor and outdoor environments. In outdoor air, PM 2.5 is primarily produced through combustion—such as emissions from gas and diesel vehicles, as well as coal and fracked gas-fired power plants. Both short- and long-term exposure to high concentrations of PM 2.5 have been linked to serious cardiovascular and respiratory health risks, including nonfatal heart attacks, asthma in children, and premature death.

Research also demonstrates that communities of color and low-income communities face greater exposure to air pollution. Interlocking systems of discrimination—such as racist housing policies, government disinvestment, and economic exploitation—have shaped the social and spatial dynamics that place communities of color in closer proximity to sources of air pollution. These structural forces continue to drive the disproportionate environmental burdens these communities face. Black and Latine populations, in particular, are exposed to significantly more air pollution than they produce—underscoring the systemic nature of environmental injustice.

Air pollution is also a significant barrier to workers’ health and productivity. Employees in low-wage and manufacturing industries are especially vulnerable, often exposed to harmful air contaminants that can lead to illness and reduced workplace performance. Research shows that the lifetime medical and productivity costs of a single new asthma diagnosis was approximately $49,600 per case across all age groups in 2021. Yet, with only 58% of low-wage workers having access to paid sick leave and Congress considering devastating cuts to Medicaid, support for protecting their health—and the environmental conditions of their workplaces—remains dangerously inadequate.

Working families also bear the cost of how PM 2.5 impacts children’s cognitive function and overall children’s health. The economic and health burdens of air pollution have far-reaching, long-term impacts on workers—especially in communities of color and low-income families—threatening both economic stability and overall well-being.

Mapping injustice with environmental data

Using EJScreen data, we analyzed potential community-level exposure to PM 2.5 relative to the state average, and how relative exposure varies with the racial demographics of communities in similar income classes. EJScreen provides data at the Census tract level—census-defined geographic units within county boundaries that typically range from 1,200 to 8,000 people.

Figure A indicates that for each income class, the share of tracts with greater potential exposure to PM 2.5 (compared with their state’s average) typically rises with the share of people of color (POC) in the area. Tracts with the highest proportions of people of color (at least 60%) stand out most. Among tracts that are 20–40% low income, nearly three-quarters (72.6%) of those with at least 60% people of color have greater potential exposure. In tracts where the share of population is at least 40% low income, nearly two-thirds (65.1%) of tracts with at least 60% people of color exceed their state’s average exposure level. Conversely, tracts with the lowest shares of people of color (less than 15%) consistently show the smallest share of elevated exposure compared with state averages for the same income class. To be clear, tracts cannot be compared across income classes as the basis of comparison for each tract is their respective state’s average within the income class.

Figure A

The removal of EJScreen significantly hinders government entities, organizations, and communities’ ability to assess the persistence of disproportionate health and economic impacts experienced by low-income communities and communities of color. Data erasure adds an additional barrier for communities to advocate for their needs and access critical resources to prevent and mitigate the harms of PM 2.5 and other environmental burdens.

Impacts of environmental data erasure

EJScreen provided accessible data to both the EPA and the public on environmental disparities that persist to this day. Federal recognition of environmental racism and environmental justice helped hold the EPA accountable in planning and implementing its programs. Under the Biden administration, the EPA explicitly made efforts to better implement environmental justice into their regulatory and enforcement work. Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided major funding for local air monitoring, which is critical for measuring the extent of harm caused by air pollutants. By contrast, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to stop the enforcement of state and local climate and environmental justice policies—marking an escalation in his administration’s attacks on environmental equity. Coupled with efforts to expand coal and fossil fuel production, these actions pose far-reaching consequences for the health and safety of communities already burdened by environmental harm.

Tools like EJScreen enable federal and state agencies to craft clear, data-driven policies that protect the health and safety of vulnerable communities. While the EPA’s EJScreen is no longer accessible, at least 16 states have developed their own environmental justice screening tools, each with varying indicators, data sources, and user interfaces. Although these state-specific tools can be useful for localized analysis, they lack the national consistency that the EPA’s EJScreen provides. Without a federal baseline, states may interpret and apply environmental justice data differently—leading to fragmented efforts and uneven protections.

When federal data are censored or erased, it undermines the ability of researchers and policymakers to document harm and expose persistent disparities that might otherwise remain invisible. The EPA plays a critical role in advancing environmental justice—and restoring its data tools is essential to protecting workers and the communities they live in.

What is happening?

The Trump administration is gutting our national public health infrastructure in real time, setting the stage for the next public health crisis. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), tasked with “protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to protect themselves,” is set to see a reduction in staff from 82,000 to 62,000 (a decrease of almost 25%) alongside major cuts to spending on contracts.

Staff reductions come as the result of induced resignation and early retirement from the “Fork in the Road” initiative set forth by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as well as proposed layoffs across several divisions, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, 2,400 layoffs), Federal Drug Administration (FDA, 3,500), National Institutes of Health (NIH, 1,200), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS, 300), and many others.

Figure A

The staff being cut provide critical services that help maintain our public health. CDC generates the information that American communities need to protect and promote their health, prevent disease and injury, and prepare for new health threats (like epidemics and pandemics). The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a division of CDC specifically dedicated to studying worker health and safety, is facing a staff reduction of two-thirds. The FDA protects the public by ensuring that medical products, drugs, and our food supply are safe to use and consume, as well as providing the public with scientifically grounded health information. NIH is the nation’s medical research agency, with divisions that cover cancer, aging, drug abuse, and mental health, among many other research areas. CMS administers Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Health Insurance Marketplace to beneficiaries.

Why is this happening?

Administration officials like new HHS head RFK Jr. and de facto DOGE head Elon Musk will argue that these cuts to public health infrastructure are intended to reduce waste and increase efficiency. Public health officials disagree; the proposed savings are low compared with the overall government spending ($1.8 billion in proposed cuts compared with a 2025 budget of $1.8 trillion) and such drastic reductions in staff will only inhibit the agencies from doing their work efficiently and effectively if they are able to do the work at all.

There is a better rationale for why the Trump administration wants to dismantle our public health institutions: It favors corporations and employers over workers and the public. This is consistent with the previous Trump administration serving corporations over working people through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and with the current Trump administration’s hostility toward workers’ rights. One way dismantling these institutions will benefit corporations at the expense of working families is by reducing the scope for corporate accountability. Institutions like the FDA help set the standards by which businesses are allowed to produce and sell goods and services. The rules and regulations upheld and enforced by these institutions ensure that products that come to market are as safe as possible for public use—and impose a significant cost on corporations that would prefer to get their products to market as soon as possible. Even so, the costs corporations pay in regulatory compliance are far outweighed by the benefits to the public of having safe and healthful products. Any government genuinely concerned with efficiency would recognize that it is more efficient for corporations to pay the costs of meeting regulatory standards than for the public to face illness, injury, and death because of unsafe products.

In addition to providing public health research, institutions like NIH and CDC also help hold corporations accountable by identifying long-term health trends associated with environmental pollution and the use of products and services that have been found to be toxic. CDC’s concerted efforts to identify the harm to public health posed by cigarette usage, including its effects on racial health disparities, are an example of how such research can increase accountability and costs for industry. This research would not exist without public funding, and an administration committed to serving corporate interests at the expense of the public would defund it. Ultimately, making public health research and oversight more difficult by gutting our public health infrastructure will make it easier for corporations to pursue profits without accountability to the public.

Why does this matter for public health?

Gutting these institutions leaves our national public health in a far more precarious position. We are that much more vulnerable to the next epidemic or pandemic when we no longer have the capacity to research, measure, and respond to public health crises. When our ability to disseminate critical public health information—on the efficacy of vaccines, the health consequences of tobacco abuse, and the impact of environmental pollution on health, among other topics—is restricted, this hampers the public’s ability to make sound decisions to promote and preserve their health. When our ability to enforce public health regulations is limited, both within and outside the workplace, workers and their families are at greater risk of exposure to dangerous working conditions, products, and pollution. New obstacles to administering key health care services will mean that fewer low-income families, children, will get the services they need. The result will be a population that is less healthy and less productive.

Why does this matter for racial health disparities?

Research institutions like CDC and NIH created dedicated divisions for studying the causes and consequences of racial health disparities. For example, CDC’s Office of Health Equity and NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities have made strides in analyzing racial health disparities and how persistent gaps in health can be eliminated. Yet the Trump administration is eliminating the Office of Health Equity, has placed the director of NIMHD on administrative leave, and is further eliminating CMS’s Office of Minority Health.

These institutions’ research addresses an array of factors related to improving health—including health behaviors, the physical and built environment, and the health care system itself—and has served individuals, families, and communities. It is thanks to research from and funded by institutions like these that we know, for example, the disparate impact COVID-19 had on Black and brown communities throughout the pandemic, due to a combination of their heightened exposure to high-contact work that often lacked necessary PPE, as well as the presence of existing chronic health conditions the disease exacerbated. Targeting these programs and their research for program cuts clearly demonstrates that the Trump administration undervalues the health of minority populations.

What will it mean economically for workers and their families?

Hampering our ability to study, prepare for, and respond to threats to our public health means the next public health crisis will be worse; more people will be sick and more people will die. That hurts the economy as well. The economy produces less when workers and their families are sick or injured; they are less able to show up to work, either due to their own condition or that of a loved one for whom they are providing care, and are less productive when they go to work.

The COVID-19 pandemic sent the economy into a serious economic downturn, with a massive unemployment spike and supply chain disruptions that led to inflation that lasted for years. The previous Trump administration’s uncoordinated response to the pandemic led to countless preventable deaths and unnecessary economic turmoil. Thankfully, Congress met the moment with spending to counteract the downturn and the incoming Biden administration continued that momentum to ensure a relatively swift recovery compared with our peers internationally. Expanded unemployment insurance, tax credits for working families, and anti-poverty measures were all tools that the Biden administration used to secure working families throughout the pandemic; they resulted in an economy that grew the fastest for those at the bottom of the income distribution. The current Trump administration’s dismantling of federal institutions in public health and more broadly suggests that we will not have nearly as many tools to combat the next public health crisis, much less its economic impact.

What should we do about it?

The loss of critical capacity at our public health institutions makes the country more vulnerable to the next public health crisis. Reversing the harm done by the Trump administration, including rehiring staff and reopening closed divisions and programs, will take time. A president and Congress interested in protecting the American people would strengthen our public health infrastructure and invest in research and service provision to prevent, prepare for, or mitigate the next public health crisis. 

Rather than dismantling the collective bargaining rights of over a million federal workers, an administration committed to maintaining a healthy nation and economy would recognize workers’ right to organize as essential to improving the nation’s health and well-being and to maintaining a robust democracy. Organized labor has always been at the forefront of lobbying for federal worker protections like the Occupational Safety and Health Act that established NIOSH in 1970. When the FDA was founded at the beginning of the 20th century, it because of public outcry about the meatpacking industry’s unsafe and unsanitary conditions—a clear example of democracy at work. Empowering workers and their families to hold corporations accountable is essential to maintaining our public health and preventing the next public health and economic crises.