Working Class Wages Are on the Rise

In his fight to elevate life for the Forgotten Americans, President Donald Trump has already shattered another record in his second term in support of blue-collar Americans. During Trump’s first five months of his second term, real wages for hourly workers saw their largest increase under any administration in nearly 60 years. 

Blue-collar U.S. workers saw real wages grow 1.7% thus far during the second Trump administration—a stark contrast from the negative wage growth seen during the first five months of the Biden administration. “The only other time it has been this high … was during President Trump’s first term,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in an interview with the New York Post. 

Bessent attributed the rise in working-class wages first to Trump’s policy focus on reviving manufacturing.

“Since Richard Nixon in 1969, Trump has been the only president to record positive growth for blue-collar workers in his first five months. He also achieved 1.3% in his first term,” noted the Post’s Miranda Devine. “The recovery from a 1.7% decline recorded in Biden’s first five months, as inflation outpaced earnings, suggests a shift in economic conditions for this financially stressed segment of the workforce.”

Bessent also noted the rise in working-class wages for Americans was due to the Trump administration’s focus on combating illegal immigration. Competition for hourly jobs with illegal immigrants drives down wages for U.S. workers.

Progressives once championed the working class. They dominated among blue-collar workers, but as the movement drifted in the direction of chaos and lawlessness, Democrats moved to the far left on immigration. Earlier on, Democrats’ 1984 party platform didn’t even include a section on immigration. 

But now they’ve shifted so far left that Democrat voters now hold more leftist views on immigration than one-time Democratic Party leaders like former President Barack Obama, who was dubbed “the deporter in chief” for the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement.  

The negative effects of illegal immigration on black U.S. workers, for example, was admitted by the Obama U.S. Civil Rights Commission: “Among its findings, the Commission notes that the illegal workers are estimated to account for as much as one-third of total immigrants in the United States, and that illegal immigration has tended to increase the supply of low-skilled, low-wage labor available. The Commission found also that about six in 10 adult black males have a high school diploma or less, and are disproportionately employed in the low-skilled labor market in likely competition with immigrants. Evidence for negative effects of such competition ranged from modest to significant, according to the experts who testified, but even those experts who viewed the effects as modest overall found significant effects in occupations such as meatpacking and construction.” 

Sadly I don’t see liberal leaders of any race—even among the black community—looking into this aspect of the civil rights movement. But people like Trump supporter Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., do. King, my former colleague at America First Policy Institute, told me that restricting illegal immigration, like the immigration ban Trump enacted in 2020 during COVID to stop the virus spread, was a “human right.” King said restricting immigration economically helps black Americans.

“We’ve got to strengthen our own borders, our own lives, our own families, our own communities. Once we do that, then we can help others,” King said. And she’s 100% correct.

A new survey found hourly workers in the service, hospitality, and retail industries overwhelmingly back Trump’s No Tax on Tips plan pending in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Workers say tax-free tips would bring them needed financial stability and relief as families continue to struggle with record inflation inflicted by Bidenomics and progressive policy.

The survey found 83% of hourly workers desire that No Tax on Tips becomes law—with just 4% saying the opposite. Trump’s plan will continue to help hourly wages rise.

“These results suggest that any measure increasing the amount of immediately available income—such as untaxed tips—would provide meaningful, stabilizing support for a large segment of the hourly workforce,” states the report from Instant Financial, a fintech payment platform for hourly workers. 

Author and poet Khalil Gibran said “Work is love made visible.” By this token, Trump is spreading love far and wide for his fellow Americans.