The man nominated this week to run the Labor Department has a number he likes. "The Working Families Tax Cuts are already paying off," Keith Sonderling said in a Florida interview. "Just in Florida, we're seeing an increase in over $7,000 of take home pay." [1] Already. We're seeing. Present tense, money in hand.
The source for that number is his own White House, and the fact sheet does not say what he says it says. [2]
What the fact sheet actually projects
The Council of Economic Advisers' Florida document uses a different tense entirely. It finds the tax law "will raise wages in Florida by an inflation-adjusted range of about $3,700 to $6,800 over the next four years," and that a typical family with two children "can expect to see" higher take-home pay of about $7,300 to $10,500 "compared to if it was not passed." [2] Three qualifiers carry all the weight: it is a projection, not a measurement; the horizon is four years, not today; and the baseline is an imaginary world where the bill failed, not your last paycheck. The wage figure's own ceiling - $6,800 - sits below the $7,000 the Secretary-designate says workers are "seeing." [2]
Data
| CEA ceiling, over four years | 6,800 |
|---|---|
| Claimed as already arrived | 7,000 |
What paychecks are actually doing
There is a measured answer to "what are workers seeing," and it arrived Thursday in the jobs report: average wages rose 3.5 percent over the past year while inflation ran 4.2 percent. [4][5] Real take-home pay is shrinking, not up $7,000 - as the AP put it, pay gains "still trailed inflation, leaving many Americans struggling to keep up with rising costs for necessities such as food, gas, and housing." [4] No federal series shows a realized $7,000 take-home jump anywhere in the country.
Why the tense matters
A projection can be honest; the CEA document, hedges and all, is a normal piece of economic advocacy. Converting it into money workers already received is the spin. The distance between "your pay could be higher than a counterfactual, four years from now" and "you are seeing $7,000 more" is the distance between a forecast and a receipt - and the man collapsing it was nominated Wednesday to run the department that publishes the real numbers. [3] The real numbers, as of this week, point the other way. [4][5]
