The BLS released information on real earnings in April this morning, and the news is not encouraging:
Real average weekly earnings fell by 0.5 percent from March to April after seasonal adjustment, according to preliminary data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. A 0.1 percent increase in average hourly earnings was offset by a 0.3 percent decrease in average weekly hours and a 0.2 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
The last three decades have not been kind to real earnings. Take a look at the full history of the real earnings series:
The discrepancy between the series is the change in hours over this period--the series for average weekly earnings falls over the period because hours fall more than enough to offset the slight rise in average hourly earnings. Over this period, private employment has been a fairly constant share of total nonfarm employment (a bit more than 80%) and production and non-supervsory employment has been a fairly constant share of total private employment (a bit less than 70% also a bit more than 80%).
This is one of the most depressing graphs I've ever seen.
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It’s a great
It’s a great website.Congrats.
total nominal income growth
total nominal income growth has been slowing sharply over the last few months and this report will not do anything to reverse that trend.
That seems to jive with the revenue growth story...
which CBO tells in a recent report that looks at individual income tax revenues as a share of GDP over the 1994-2000 period compared with 2000-2004:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/90xx/doc9076/TaxTOC.2.1.htm
Great figure
Very nice figure. Is there any chance I can get my hands on the spread sheet you generated this with? Or at least give a link to the raw data?
Thanks
This is why Clinton had to go
When real earnings rise, labor is less able to be bullied by capital. Notice the sharp uptick in real hourly earnings between 1996 and 2000. Add to this the fact that this period coincided with declining deficits and the first surpluses in 30 years and you can understand why bill Clinton just had to go: not doing enough to defend the prerogatives of capital over labor.
Very helpful artical. Thanks
Very helpful artical. Thanks a lot.
You can get the data at
You can get the data at bls.gov.
Not so depressing
The Minneapolis Fed's publication, The Region, has a less depressing analysis of these figures:
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/07-09/wages.cfm
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