wages

I decided to break a rule. The BLS says that it is inappropriate to calculate seasonally adjusted wages in constant dollars. But I did so anyway. Real wages in constant dollars allow us to compare wages over time.

Average real wages (blue line) were calculated by dividing nominal weekly wages seasonally adjusted for production and nonsupervisory employees (blue collar workers) by the CPI-U All Items index and multiplying the result by 100. This index is expressed in 1982-1984 dollars and is why the blue line intercepts the nominal wage line in 1984. Read below the fold...

I came across this recently from Obama's stump speech:

Now we’ve added more than 5 million new jobs, more manufacturing jobs than any time since the 1990s. The unemployment rate has fallen from 10 percent to 7.8 percent. Foreclosures are at their lowest in five years. Home values are on the rise. Stock market has doubled. Manufacturing is coming back. Assembly lines are putting folks back to work. That’s what we’ve been fighting for. Those are the promises I’ve kept.”

Read below the fold...

Last Friday on the 17th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its report covering real wages in January 2012. Real wages are inflation adjusted, as opposed to actual nominal wages which can go up even as their buying power decreases due to inflation.

For all employees, real hourly wages, seasonally adjusted, fell 1% year over year from January 2011 to January 2012.

Weekly real take home pay decreased less than this: 0.4%. This was due to a 0.6% increase in the average work week.

This mitigated the effect of the hourly losses, but it also meant that Americans were working more for less and still overall losing ground. Read below the fold...

Barry Grey of wsws has the grimmest but most reality-based analysis of Obama’s Tuesday night State of the Union message.

Grey:

The speech was actually one of the most reactionary State of the Union addresses ever delivered. Obama placed his “blueprint” for the US economy within the framework of a chilling celebration of the American military and its criminal activities around the world. Among the achievements he cited were the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya and murder of Gaddafi. He spoke with particular pride of the extra-legal drone assassinations in Africa and the Middle East and concluded with a paean to the Navy SEALs who murdered Osama bin Laden.

Read below the fold...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with a couple of recent reports (here and here). I thought I would discuss a few of the items that struck me as interesting.

In the 4th quarter of 2010, the seasonally unadjusted median wage for full time wage and salary workers was $752/week. This was up from $748/week in the 4th quarter of 2009 or 0.5%. The bad news is that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) which likely understates inflation was up 1.3% in 2010. So the working public actually fell a little further behind in 2010. Read below the fold...

Economics 101 at AP:

Rising productivity means that employers can boost salaries because of workers' increased efficiency. It is the single most important factor supporting rising living standards.

Sure, they can. And weasels could fly out of my butt.

They could also cream off the profits from our harder and harder work for themselves. Which is exactly what's been happening for the last 30 years, as real income has been flat for all but the top 1%. Read below the fold...

Tula, Mike and the gang run a great blog, and I need to link to it more often. As the minimum wage bill works its way through the halls of Congress, this post reminded me of a couple of points we need to talk about more:

Opponents of a clean bill to the raise the minimum wage—which is at its lowest buying power in more than 50 years—claim that without a multibillion dollar tax break lifeline, the nation’s business community faces economic disaster. We are not the only ones who say that is balderdash. Read below the fold...