贾斯汀·福克斯撰文唐纳德·特朗普总统第二任期内，美国经济表现究竟如何？若以主要经济统计数据为准，情况并不算坏。上周，第二季度国内生产总值（GDP）年化季率被上修至2.2%，此前报告为1.5%。失业率为4.2%，符合充分就业经济体的标准。
How’s the US economy doing in President Donald Trump’s second term? Going by the topline economic statistics, not too bad. Second-quarter gross domestic product was revised higher last week, to a 2.2% annualized rate from a previously reported 1.5%. At 4.2%, the jobless rate is consistent with an economy considered to be at full employment.
那么，为何几乎所有民意调查都显示，民众对总统经济表现及整体经济状况极度不满？这可能是基于理性判断：特朗普的政策让某些问题略微恶化，尤其是通胀和利率。联邦债务突破40万亿美元，全球气候日益失控，而备受瞩目的年度首次公开募股（IPO）招股说明书竟警告存在“对人类的灾难性或生存性风险”，让人不难找到担忧的理由。也可能只是因为，自他首次当选总统将近十年来，大多数美国人已对特朗普及其惯常伎俩感到厌倦，进而对与他相关的一切感到不快。
Why then does almost every opinion survey find massive dissatisfaction with the president’s economic performance and the state of the economy in general? It could be a rational judgment that Trump’s policies have made certain matters somewhat worse, inflation and interest rates especially. With federal debt topping $40 trillion, the world’s climate going increasingly haywire and the prospectus for the year’s most-anticipated initial public offering warning of “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” it’s not hard to find something to worry about. It could also just be that, closing in on a decade after he was first elected president, most Americans have tired of Donald Trump and his schtick and are feeling grumpy about everything associated with him.
但自2010年代末以来，尤其是2021年以来，经济统计数据与经济情绪之间一直存在脱节，二者的历史关联性已瓦解，情绪持续比数据所暗示的更为悲观。在诸多可能的解释中，最令人信服的一条——也是我个人唯一能采取行动应对的一条——是媒体对经济的报道相对于统计数据变得持续更加负面，而这主要是因为数字媒体的消费者以可轻松衡量的点击量和互动率来奖励负面内容。
But there has been a disconnect between economic statistics and economic sentiment since the late 2010s, and especially since 2021, with the historic relationship between the two breaking down and sentiment consistently more negative than the data would suggest. Of the many possible explanations, one of the most convincing — and the only one that I personally can do anything about — is that media coverage of the economy has become consistently more negative relative to the statistics, which in turn has happened mostly because consumers of digital media reward negativity with easily measured clicks and engagement.
无论人们对特朗普持何种看法，对经济持续的并不健康，且会让各派政客更难推成建设性的事情。因此，尽管可能会减少点击量和互动，我仍想强调一组自2010年代中期以来传递出极其利好的关键统计数据。即使扣除通胀因素，美国的收入和工资增速也达到了数十年来未见的水平。
Regardless of what one thinks of Trump, persistent negativity about the economy isn’t healthy, and can make it harder for politicians of all stripes to get useful things done. So at the risk of discouraging clicks and engagement, I’d like to emphasize one very important set of statistics that since the mid-2010s have conveyed spectacularly good news. Even after adjusting for inflation, US incomes and wages have grown at a pace not seen in many decades.
需要明确的是，这是中位数收入而非平均数，意味着2025年收入超过87,460美元的家庭数量与收入低于该数的家庭数量相同。自2015年以来中位数持续上升，表明收入增长是广泛惠及大众的，而非集中在顶层。这里衡量的是收入，由于年轻人——其收入通常低于长辈——越来越多地选择留在父母家中而非自立门户，该指标在一定程度上被推高了。但实际工资不受此影响，过去十年也呈现出相似尽管略缓的上升趋势。
Just to be clear, this is the median income, not the average, meaning that in 2025 the same number of households made more than $87,460 as made less. When the median rises as it has since 2015 it signals that the income gains are broad-based, not concentrated at the top. The measure here is income, and thus skewed upward somewhat by the fact that young adults — who tend to have lower incomes than their elders — have increasingly been staying at home with their parents rather than forming their own households. But real wages, which are not affected by this, have been on a similar if somewhat less steep trajectory over the past decade.
家庭收入和工资的部分增长可归因于稳定的经济增长。过去十年，人均国内生产总值以1.9%的年化实际增速增长，这听起来不多，但优于2010年代的1.7%和2000年代的0.8%，仅略低于1980年代和1990年代的2.1%以及1970年代的2.2%。避免经济衰退——并确保2020年由疫情引发的非典型衰退昙花一现——极大地提振了美国人的收入。
Some of the increase in both household incomes and wages can be chalked up to steady economic growth. Per-capita gross domestic product has risen at a 1.9% annual, inflation-adjusted pace over the past 10 years, which doesn’t sound like much but is better than in the 2010s (1.7%) and 2000s (0.8%) and only slightly below the 2.1% growth rate of the 1980s and 1990s and 2.2% of the 1970s. Avoiding recessions — and ensuring that the unusual pandemic-caused downturn in 2020 was short-lived — has done a lot for Americans’ incomes.
此外，劳动力市场也出现了一些重要变化。2020年初收入的急剧增长，是数百万低薪服务业工作者因疫情相关封锁而失业的副产品——这并非什么好事。（2020年税前家庭收入中位数有所下降，但包含联邦刺激金的税后估算数据则显示有所增长。）然而，随着经济迅速复苏，企业急于重新雇佣这些工人，由此引发了一系列积极连锁反应。经济学家David Autor、Arindrajit Dube和Annie McGrew将其称为“意外压缩”：收入分配底层的工资增长速度远超顶层。
There have been some important labor-market-specific developments as well. The sharp increase in earnings in early 2020 was a byproduct of millions of low-paid service workers losing their jobs because of pandemic-related shutdowns — not a good thing. (Pre-tax median household income fell in 2020, although after-tax estimates that included federal stimulus payments showed an increase.) But the scramble to rehire these workers as the economy quickly recovered set off a positive chain of events that economists David Autor, Arindrajit Dube and Annie McGrew dubbed “the unexpected compression,” with wages growing much faster at the bottom of the income distribution than at the top.
工资压缩推动了收入中位数和整体收入的上升。在新冠疫情之前的几年里，这种现象也以较小规模出现过，经济学家认为这是2010年代各州和地方最低工资标准普遍上调的结果。但近期这种压缩趋势已经停滞：自2024年底以来，工资分布中下四分位工人的小时工资增速慢于高收入工人，尽管最近这一差距有所缩小。
Wage compression helped drive the rise in median earnings and incomes, and was also happening on a more modest scale in the years before the pandemic, which the economists attribute to the proliferation of state and local minimum wage increases in the 2010s. More recently this compression has stalled, with hourly wages for workers in the bottom quartile of the wage distribution rising more slowly than those of higher-wage workers since late 2024, although the gap has narrowed recently.
自今年2月伊朗战争爆发以来，工资增长也落后于通货膨胀，这意味着实际收入略有下降。是的，收入数据确实在走弱，美国人对这种情况感到不满也在情理之中。
Since the beginning of Iran war in February, pay increases have also trailed inflation, meaning real earnings have fallen slightly. Yes, the earnings numbers have been weakening, and it’s reasonable for Americans to be cranky about this.
然而，更难与收入和薪酬数据相协调的是：自2022年3月以来的每个月，密歇根大学消费者调查中，认为自身财务状况比一年前更差的受访者比例，都高于认为情况更好的人数。目前这一负面与的比例几乎与2008年大衰退时期相当，甚至超过了此前任何时期（数据可追溯至1960年）。我推测，许多受访者可能受到了整体负面情绪的影响。
Harder to square with the income and earnings data is that in every month since March 2022 more respondents to the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers have said their financial situation situation is worse than a year earlier than that it’s better, with the current ratio of negatives to positives almost as bad as during the Great Recession in 2008 and worse than at any time before then (the data go back to 1960). I suspect many respondents have gotten caught up in all the negative vibes.
中位数收入和工资数据同样来自家庭调查，而这些调查本身也可能存在缺陷。但作为工资数据来源的月度《当前人口调查》，以及收入数据所依据的年度《社会与经济补充调查》，其样本规模远大于任何消费者信心调查或民意测验。我认为，直接询问具体数字会比询问“情况是变好了还是变坏了”更能获得可靠的答案。此外，平均工资数据来自一项完全独立的雇主调查，其近期走势与家庭调查所得的中位数工资数据高度一致。实际收入和工资确实实现了增长。
The median income and wage numbers are also derived from household surveys, which could also be flawed. But the monthly Current Population Survey that’s the source of the wage data and its Annual Social and Economic Supplement from which the income numbers are derived are far bigger than any consumer confidence survey or opinion poll, and I suspect that asking for numbers delivers more reliable answers than asking if things are better or worse. Also, the average wage data comes from an entirely separate survey of employers, and has followed a recent trajectory very similar to the household-survey median wage data. Real incomes and wages really have grown.
但这并不意味着每个人的生活状况在所有方面都改善了。即使你的实际收入有所增长，可能仍然买不起房子或汽车。不过，这总比收入和工资下降要好得多。
This doesn’t mean every person is better off in every way. Even if your real income is up you may still not be able to afford a house or a car. But it’s a lot better than having incomes and wages fall.
除了宣布收入和工资的这一好消息之外，还能做些什么呢？推动一项可能带来更多类似好消息的政策，似乎是一个有前景的第一步。长期以来，许多经济学家认为提高最低工资会摧毁就业岗位，但自2013年以来各州和地方陆续开展的实验，为实证研究提供了可能，并证实了由此造成的就业损失微乎其微。这表明，自2009年以来一直停滞在日益失去实际意义的每小时7.25美元的联邦最低工资标准，或许可以上调，从而在造成较少附带损害的同时提升收入。
What is to be done other than proclaiming this good news about incomes and wages? Building momentum behind a policy likely to bring more such good news seems like a promising first step. While manyeconomists long assumed that minimum wage increases destroyed jobs, empirical research enabled by the wave of state and local experiments since 2013 has established that the job losses have been minimal. This indicates that the federal minimum which has been stuck at an increasingly meaningless $7.25 per hoursince 2009, could be increased and boost incomes with little collateral damage.
这样的上调措施还会获得广泛支持——民主党人、独立人士，甚至只要增幅不大，共和党人也会支持。真正关心应对经济负面趋势的政客应当积极支持这一举措。
Such an increase would also be popular, with Democrats, independents and even, as long as it’s on the small side, Republicans. Politicians sincerely interested in combating economic negativity ought to embrace it.