Wages of US labor force

Real Earnings in December 2011, BLS January 19, 2012 Real average hourly earnings for all employees rose 0.2 percent from November to December, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This change stems from a 0.2 percent increase in average hourly earnings, while the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) remained unchanged.

Real average weekly earnings rose 0.5 percent over the month, as a result of the increase in real average hourly earnings and a 0.3 percent rise in the average workweek. Since reaching a peak in October 2010, real average weekly earnings have fallen 1.1 percent.

Real average hourly earnings fell 0.9 percent, seasonally adjusted, from December 2010 to December 2011. A 0.6 percent increase in the average workweek, combined with the decline in real average hourly earnings, resulted in a 0.3 percent decrease in real average weekly earnings during the same period.[emphasis added-jz]

Median income for full-time male workers in 2010: $47,715
Median income for full-time male workers in 1973: $49,065 [2010 dollars] Pro Publica, 9/11

Have Earnings Actually Declined?, Greenstone & Looney, Brookings, Hamilton Project, 3/11

Source: Greenstone & Looney

Basic family budget calculator, EPI

Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s, Wasow, TCF, 5/08

For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t, David Leonhardt, NYTimes, 4/9/08

Real wage reversal persists, Bernstein, EPI, 2/08

Change in real compensation by different income levels 8/9/07

Understanding Low-Wage Work in the United States, Boushey et al, 3/07

Earnings premium for skilled workers down sharply in recent years, 2/06

"Bush's Expansion Leaves Workers Behind, Sparking Fed Friction

Jan. 17 [2006] (Bloomberg) -- American workers have rarely taken home a smaller share of the nation's prosperity, a condition that is undermining bipartisan support for free trade and creating friction between President George W. Bush's administration and the Federal Reserve.

After 16 consecutive quarters of economic growth, pay is rising at a slower rate than in any similar expansion since the end of World War II. Companies are paying less of their cash gains in the form of wages and salaries than at any time since the Great Depression, according to government figures.

Such a disparity, partly the result of globalization of the labor market, helps explain why the Bush administration is struggling to muster support for lower trade barriers even with the jobless rate at a four-year low. The imbalance has also triggered a debate between Bush's Treasury Department and the Fed about how low unemployment can go without kindling inflation.

``There is no doubt that something is happening'' to reduce labor's share of income, says Robert Solow, a Nobel Prize- winning economist and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. An economy that doesn't distribute its gains widely is ``poorly performing,'' he says.

From the final quarter of 2001 through last year's third quarter, total compensation paid to employees by corporations, including health benefits, rose at a 4.3 percent average annual rate, according to government figures. That's the slowest growth for any similar period in post-war expansions lasting at least four years.

`Not Connecting'-- Stripping away benefits, corporate wages and salaries rose at a 3.4 percent annual rate in the 16-quarter period, the slowest of any post-war expansion lasting that long. Wages and salaries as a share of the cash corporations are generating from the expansion stood at 51 percent in the second and third quarters, the lowest in government records going back to 1929. Including benefits, labor's share was the lowest since 1997......... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_us&refer=us&sid=azvCEhXtl1g0

An off-kilter expansion: Slack job market continues to hurt wage growth, Bernstein & Price, 9/05

Incomes Down; Poverty Up, Bernstein and Mishel

The Productivity Problem, J.Tasini, Working Life, July 14, 2005

Union Advantage Reaches New Highs, 6/05

Living-Wage Politics--states are raising minimum wage

How Prime-Age Workers Get Trapped in Minimum Wage Jobs, Boushey, 5/05

The Fruits Of One's Labor, Max B. Sawicky 5/05

"In the past three years...shop-happy consumers, cheerfully determined to live beyond their means, leaned a lot more heavily on borrowings ($675 billion of non-mortgage debt) than paychecks ($530 billion) to cover the $1.3 trillion increase in their spending." .Source for charts: Stephanie Pomboy, MacroMavens, via Alan Abelson, Barron's, April 25, 2005; Abelson quoted in http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/

Real Wages: two years of loss Profits fine [graph-Business Week 4/18/05]

"Over the last 30 years the typical (median) wage in the United States has hardly grown -- only about 9 percent. Productivity -- output per employee -- has grown by 82 percent over the same period. Normally we would expect wages and salaries to grow with productivity. These trade agreements have helped keep wages from growing here, by increasing competition with workers making 60 cents per hour and by making it easier for employers to threaten to move when workers demand their share of rising productivity. " "CAFTA Fall Short on Economic Arguments," By Mark Weisbrot, 4/05. See also http://www.cbpp.org/4-21-05inc.htm

The National Jobs for All Coalition is a project of the Council on Public and International Affairs.

National Jobs for All Coalition
P.O. Box 96
Lynbrook, NY 11563
Email: njfac [at] njfac.org