The lowest-paid workers in the economy saw the fastest wage growth by far over the last five years according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. 

Adjusted for inflation workers in the bottom 10% of the income distribution saw their wages grow more than 15% between 2019 and 2024.

This time five years ago between February and April 2020, about 22 million people lost their jobs, many of them low-wage workers. 

“Workers in leisure and hospitality and retail — all of those industries were essentially shut down,” said Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute.

Gould said when things reopened and employers started hiring again, “Workers had a moment to pause. We had, one time in history, better unemployment insurance programs and they could be a little bit choosier.” That meant employers had to pay more. 

This happened across the economy, including for those in higher-paying jobs, to a lesser extent. Wages for these workers have risen about 6% or 7% since 2019, compared to 15% for people in the lowest-paying jobs. 

“It’s also 15% starting from a very low base — if you’re making $10 an hour, 15% growth is a buck-fifty” said Brad Hershbein at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Hershbein said even with that jump in wages many of the lowest-paid workers are still struggling, and that inflation has hit them particularly hard.

“[Those workers] tend to buy things that are more subject to inflation, and those things also represent a larger share of all the things that they buy,” he said. “Take rent for example, we know that rent is a bigger share of people’s budget at the bottom than at the top.”

Rent has gone way up in the last five years, which Hershbein says has eaten into those wage gains.