Fact Check: Joe Biden Claims Blue-Collar Americans Getting ‘Clobbered’

Biden told the audience at CNN’s debate in Iowa:

Working-class people — where I come from in Pennsylvania, the places I come from in Delaware — I have great support. I have support across the board, and I’m not worried about taking on Donald Trump at all. And with regard to the economy I can hardly wait to have a debate with him.

Where I come from — the neighborhoods I come from — they’re in real trouble: working-class people and middle-class people. When the middle class does well, [the] working class has a way up and the wealthy do well. But what’s happening now: they’re being clobbered, they’re being killed. They now have a situation where they [believe] — the vast majority believe — their children will never reach the stage that they reached in economic security.

I love that [economic] debate because the American public is getting clobbered. The wealthy are the only ones doing well. Period. I’m looking forward to the economic debate.

But on December 27, Breitbart News reported;

Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that for the lowest wage earners, Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” economy has delivered the quickest rate of wage hikes in more than a decade.

In November, the bottom 25 percent of wage earners saw their wages rise 4.5 percent compared to November 2018. These bottom-tier workers, those earning less than all other Americans, have secured a labor market that now resembles the labor market of top-tier workers — a result of less low-skilled foreign competition against Americans through increased interior immigration enforcement.

…

President of the Mooyah Burgers restaurant chain, Tony Darden, told the Wall Street Journal that the tightening of the labor market has forced wages up for his employees:

“The effective labor pool is smaller than what it has been in the past,” said Tony Darden, Mooyah’s president. “As you look to bring on folks, ultimately higher wages are used to attract them.”

(Screenshot via Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta)

Wages for blue-collar Americans rose by 4.3 percent in 2019 — or 2.7 percent after inflation — in President Donald Trump’s tightening labor market, according to a December report by Goldman Sachs.