Carmen Sanchez Cumming

On March 7, President Joe Biden will deliver the 2024 State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress and the American public, in which he will tout his economic and other policy achievements. This charticle preemptively assesses the state of the U.S. economy by looking at some of the key indicators of aggregate economic health. Overall, the data suggest that the U.S. economy is strong and poised to continue growing.

When policymakers were debating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, many proponents claimed that average U.S. workers would benefit via wage increases. These adherents of trickle-down economic theory argued that, alongside other business tax cuts in the law, slashing the C-corporation tax rate by 14 percentage points, from 35 percent to 21 percent, would reduce these firms’ cost of capital­—or how expensive, after tax, it is to invest in new projects.

Increasing the minimum wage has repeatedly been shown to raise the pay of low-wage workers and improve the overall economy. While the federal minimum wage remains at its 2009 level of $7.25 per hour, 30 states and dozens of cities, as well as Washington, DC, have instituted much higher wage floors.