Robert Reich's deceptive data tricks

The former U.S. labor secretary presents economic data in deceptive ways.

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Robert Reich, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former U.S. labor secretary, makes popular economics videos arguing that the U.S. economy is rigged against workers.

One of his recent pieces caught my eye because it makes heavy use of numbers and charts. The video is a great example of how to misuse economic data to support a preconceived narrative—in this case, a fairy-tale account of evil CEOs stealing wealth from their employees.

At the outset of the video, Reich presents a chart showing that in 2024 the "typical worker" earned $36.49 per hour, while CEOs made—"ready for this?" Reich asks viewers—$431.80!

There are lots of problems with this chart, starting with the fact that it's labeled "CEO Salaries," but that's not what the $431.80 figure represents. Though he rarely sources his work, Reich's chart matches data from a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which measures what the leaders of the largest 350 public corporations in America earn, not all CEOs.

There are about 4,000 publicly traded corporations headquartered in the U.S., and even more privately held companies. They all have CEOs. Reich has cherry-picked the wealthiest and most successful faces in the crowd. This is like measuring what the highest-paid actors earn, setting aside all the struggling performers waiting tables, and claiming that acting is the world's most lucrative profession.

So what does Reich conclude from all of this misinformation and misconceived data? That we need a slew of policies to rein in American capitalism. He says we should "raise the federal minimum wage," "strengthen labor unions," "use antitrust laws to break up big corporate monopolies," "raise taxes on corporations," and "ban stock buybacks."

Apart from his misinformed discussion of stock buybacks, Reich doesn't address those issues in his video. Instead, all he's done is cherry-pick the compensation of the top CEOs in America and use a faulty data series to claim the economy is rigged against workers.

The charts and numbers we use to argue about important questions in public life are too often presented in deceptive ways. It doesn't get much more deceptive than this video.

Producer: Aaron Brown

Video editor: Cody Huff

Graphics: Gustavo Martinez-Schmidt

Audio Production: Ian Keyser