itemprop=description content=WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The richest Americans are emerging from the coronavirus pandemic with their share of wealth and income on the rise again despite some thought that the tight job market and hefty wage gains spawned by the crisis might narrow the gulf between rich and poor.
WASHINGTON, Oct 9 - The richest Americans are emerging from the coronavirus pandemic with their share of wealth and income on the rise again despite some thought that the tight job market and hefty wage gains spawned by the crisis might narrow the gulf between rich and poor.
For the bottom 40% by income that means a smaller slice of the pie even as their net worth has risen at the swiftest pace in years. While the collective net worth of the bottom one-fifth was up 27% to $4.2 trillion at the end of the second quarter from $3.3 trillion in 2019, their share of the country's wealth shrank to 6.7% from 7% during that time.
Indeed, distributional questions have figured prominently in the ongoing United Auto Workers strike as union members try to claim a bigger share of automakers' earnings. They've also been a centerpiece of Biden administration efforts to bolster middle-class wages.The pandemic economy started on a grim note of deep recession and a 14.5% unemployment rate in the spring of 2020.
Yet Dynan noted that the rise in wealth over that period was 30% for families in the 80th to 99th income percentiles and more than 40% for the top 1%. Quarter-to-quarter and even year-to-year comparisons can be misleading, as the pandemic showed. The share of net worth held by the top 1% of families, for example, actually peaked at 27.4% in the middle of 2021, so the latest reading of 26.5% marks a decline from that level.
Even though the bottom one-fifth have seen a robust increase in net worth since 2019, there have been times when that group has done better: Over a comparable period from mid-2016 up to the pandemic, its share of net worth rose 67% as the sluggish rebound from the 2007-2009 recession gave way to an era of low unemployment, low interest rates, low inflation and rising wages at the bottom of the scale.
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