Just before his planned visit to the City of Brotherly Love, President Biden said wages were at their highest since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but blue-collar workers there feel their income hasn’t improved much.
“We’re still struggling. We could be better,” Donny told Fox News. “Wages could be better.”
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Joe, who works in a butcher shop, said inflation was so bad it didn’t matter if wages increased slightly.
“Everything’s so high,” he said. “Food is so expensive right now it’s not even funny.”
Biden tweeted Sunday that “real wages for the average American worker,” were higher than before the pandemic.
Twitter had marked the president’s claim as containing a “factual error” because real wages — adjusted for inflation — were higher on March 15, 2020, when lockdowns began in the U.S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But they were higher at the end of February, after the first COVID-19 cases were diagnosed.
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“I work as much as I can so this way I can make ends meet,” Joe told Fox News.
“I’m making a little more money, but I’m also paying more for everything,” he added. “So nothing’s really changed.”
Chauncey didn’t see improvement, either.
“I really can’t tell the difference, honestly,” the trucker said. “I just wake up every day and just do what I got to do. What else can you do?”
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Biden is set to visit Philadelphia on Thursday as he continues touring the nation pushing “Bidenomics.” But several blue-collar workers criticized the president, arguing he hadn’t done enough to help improve wages.
“He needs to get the hell out of office,” Dan, a bakery worker, told Fox News. “I think soon as he gets out of office we’ll be in much better position.”
He said the economy is “absolutely worse” than before Biden came into office, though he acknowledged wages had gone up slightly.
“That’s only because everything’s so high,” he said. Wages must increase “if everything in the world is so much higher.”
But William, a Philadelphia native, thought blue-collar workers’ situation had improved.
“I’m glad that Biden did take over because there’s more jobs opportunity now,” he said. “We was better when he took over office.”
Valerie said problems with the economy predated Biden.
“I don’t feel like the president before him did anything, and he’s not doing anything,” she told Fox News. “I feel like we’re still in the same rut that we were in. Like we haven’t move forward. We’re still stuck.”
