Special mention
Posts Tagged ‘wages’
Cartoon of the day
Posted: 26 May 2012 in UncategorizedTags: capitalists, cartoon, crisis, debt, Germany, Greece, race, United States, wages, workers
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source [ht: tm]
source Between 2000 and 2011, the wages of young college graduates in the United States dropped 5.4 percent. That decline stands in sharp contrast to the period from 1995 to 2000, when their wages rose 19.1 percent.
Mind the gap
Posted: 27 April 2012 in UncategorizedTags: CEOs, corporations, inequality, productivity, United States, wages, workers
“Mind the Gap” is the title of my presentation at the upcoming Volcano symposium. It’s also the subject of an important new piece of research by Larry Mishel and Kar-Fai Gee. Their argument is that the key to explaining growing income inequality in the United States is the growing gap between productivity and wages. What [...]
United States of low wages
Posted: 23 April 2012 in UncategorizedTags: United States, wages, workers
John Schmitt [pdf] defines low-wage jobs as paying less than two-thirds of the national median hourly wage. Schmitt also explains that low wages are not the only problem for low-wage workers, particularly in the United States: The intense policy focus on low pay can obscure the reality that low pay is often among the least [...]
-1 is the ugliest number
Posted: 21 April 2012 in UncategorizedTags: CEO, corporations, profits, United States, wages, workers
Before you start humming the tune. . . The reason -1 is the ugliest number is that’s the amount median weekly earnings (in constant 1982-84 dollars) changed during the past nine years, from the first quarter of 2003 to the first quarter of 2012. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in early 2003, median [...]
Neoclasical economists blame workers always and everywhere
Posted: 18 April 2012 in UncategorizedTags: economics, economists, neoclassical, unemployment, wages, workers
Neoclassical economists’ solution to every macroeconomic crisis no matter where it occurs is to introduce labor market “flexibility” and to lower workers’ wages. It’s what they have argued in the case of the United States (here and here) and Greece (here and here). And now it’s what they’re recommending for Spain. Cinzia Alcidi and Daniel [...]
Cartoon of the day
Posted: 18 April 2012 in UncategorizedTags: cartoon, corporations, profits, Republicans, United States, wages, women, workers
Special mention
Chart of the day
Posted: 6 April 2012 in UncategorizedTags: crisis, profits, rich, unemployment, United States, wages, workers
Barry Ritholz reproduces the chart above and an explanation of the data from Bloomberg Briefing: The pace of income gains is well below that of the past two jobless recoveries and real average hourly earnings continue to decline.The strength of labor employment gains in the subsectors of leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance, [...]
What knowledge economy?!
Posted: 24 March 2012 in UncategorizedTags: economy, inequality, knowledge, poverty, unemployment, United States, wages, workers
The United States does not have now, nor will it have in the foreseeable future, a knowledge economy. That’s Alexander Cockburn’s conclusion[ht: ja], based on an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (pdf) conducted by Jack Metzgar. (Here is another useful BLS projection [pdf], whence the chart above.) Most people are surprised [...]
