November 08, 2003 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
I knew it was too good to be true...
While I noted yesterday that on the surface the employment situation for October looked good, I confessed to my spouse at the time that I had a nagging feeling that something was just not right. So I got up bright and early this morning (4am) in order to look over the numbers without the distraction of four children bounding around. I don't really know what drew me immediately to the statistics on hourly wages for production or non-supervisory worker bees, as I never tend to follow those numbers very closely. But immediately upon opening Appendix B-4, my concerns didn't appear so silly.
On the first chart below, I've plotted the trend of average hourly wage, in current dollars, for the last 10 months. I tried to go even further back, but, as we've seen is a common occurence recently at the BLS, the benchmarks were altered in April, and only revised back until January, so that even December's numbers are not comparable. As I'll discuss below, however, the trends over previous years are in fact statistically relevant, and shed significant light on the current situation.
The most obvious and disconcerting trend observed from this graph is that it appears that wages for average workers have stalled since July ($0.02 increase since summer.) This, in comparison with the $0.21 increase from January through June.
This next graph is the same data set (Jan-Oct 2003), but utilizing the 1987 benchmark, i.e., wages adjusted for inflation using the current Consumer Price Index (CPI).
[Note: October's number is preliminary, as it isn't released until later in the month, but is based upon +0.3% trend observed in the past three months.]
So while the "current" hourly wage for American non-exempt workers has stagnated, in the real world of rents or mortgages, groceries, heating oil, clothing and whatever else consumers need or fancy, what that wage buys has been decreasing since mid-summer. Unless the trend turns around in the next few months, US workers may see a decrease in their inflation-adjusted income for the first time since 1994. In comparison, in 1997 and 1998, American workers saw a net gain of $0.16 and $0.15 cents per hour respectively. Last year, the hourly wage gain a whopping $0.04 per hour, adjusted for inflation.
While this doesn't negate the excellent gains made in job creation during the past few months, it might take the bloom off the rose just a bit. Bush can promise hundreds of thousands of new jobs every month, but if the Democratic nominee can still ask the American public the old adage, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" and have a significant number of voters respond "no", that bus ticket back to Crawford may be the best that Bush can hope for next November.
Update: No sooner than I published this, I wandered over to the Times, where I came across this article on corporate execs not feeling so warm and fuzzy about the latest job news. And buried in the middle of the article, these timely paragraphs:
And a new economic study, prepared for the United States Conference of Mayors, concludes that wages are significantly lower in the service sectors that are adding jobs than in the manufacturing industries that have been losing jobs.According to the study, prepared by the economic consulting firm Global Insight, the biggest job growth over the next two years will be in the areas of administration and support services, health care, travel and tourism.
The average wage in those sectors over the next two years is expected to be $36,000, the study concluded. By contrast, the average wage in manufacturing sectors that lost jobs is $43,000.
Hmmm...
... my spouse at the time ...
Damn that's alarming. Is she time-sharing? Am I about to get a friendly missive from Lawyer Daggett? Who gets the fish? The cats? The dog?
Anyway, remind me again why the SEIU endorssed a clown who wants to cut middle class wages even more, and ... Oh. They're the "would you like fries or janitorial service with that endorsement" union. Awfully altruistic lot, all hot and bothered about Iraq, and willing to let their wages slide.
Posted by: The SO at November 8, 2003 08:42 PMIf you're a tax-cut-no-matter-the-consequences-type voter, why do you care who the Unions endorse as Democratic candidate since Bush is so obviously your man ?
Your tax cut was chump change to mask the massive revenue giveaways to the very wealthy. Chump change given back is a small price to pay to 'fairly' force the rich back into a progressive tax structure. So it's not "just the little people who pay taxes".
Bush's war is being financed entirely by debt secured by your tax dollars. Debt servicing comes before government services. That's a damn good reason to oppose the war.
Posted by: Patrick (G) at November 9, 2003 06:55 PMPatrick, I don't mean to put words into my spouse's mouth (he being the "SO" mentioned above) but claiming that just because he is critical of the SEIU's endorsement of Dean, he is somehow a supporter of Bush is just down-right ridiculous. There are plenty of Indians who will not support a Dean candidacy, and I think that it is you who needs to look to yourself to understand why that is, rather have us have to explain our every move. We do not hide the fact that one of the foremost foci of this site is advocacy of Indian issues, and Howard Dean has never been a friend of Indians.
Posted by: MB at November 9, 2003 11:17 PMMB,
Criticizing Dean for what he has done vis-a-vis Indian issues is more than fair.
But that's not what your spouse just did.
I am not upset that he called Dean a clown, but I was with the rest of his statement; which struck me as anti-tax,anti- anti-war, and anti-union... which I found ridiculously Republican to be coming from a Democrat.
My response was not a defense of Dean so much as of my own beliefs.
I am opposed to the current war.
I believe in progressive taxes to pay for essential government services.
And I am also moderately pro-union.
What amazes me about the SEIU endorsement is that the endorsee favors "flat relief" (a term coined here) rather than "progressive relief".
The point of going non-linear about Iraq, and being indifferent to wages and benefits, in trade unionists, the usual composition of union managements, escapes me.
Well, enough fun.
Posted by: the SO at November 10, 2003 01:56 PMIn my journal I wrote:
gizsanda 17 mozokas (lundi 17 mars) [Monday March 17, 2003]
I cannot pray for a triumph of American Arms this evening. I think of children like my sons. Hands already floppy, eyes too ready to turn inward, neurologically atypical, about to be subjected to aerial bombardment. My sons' sleep disorders are my own.
Later, July 11th, I wrote:
Personally, I don't see how we can get out without re-establishing the opposing forces, and ceeding terrain and civil jurisdiction to them. Now would be good. Fobbing it off as a domestic political impossiblity on the UN just delays the transfer of control and puts a toe-tag on one or more enlisted man, and IV bags and one-ways to Germany or State-side on another half-dozen, each day of delay.
My suggestion to the Candidate -- everyone else in the race is gambling that Bush's strategy will work, and some kind of peacefull settlement with a new regime in place will just happen, that Vietnamization will work and that there will be Peace With Honor.
No one is making the re-establishment of Iraqi forces as Iraqi civil defense an unconditional priority, to allow US troops to safely extricate. Sadam had no part in 9/11, nor did the Iraqi civil and military leadership, for all their other faults. Decapitation of the Iraqi civil and military leadership leaves no one but US troops to prevent anyone, repeat, anyone, from engaging US forces, at the sub-squad force level. No candidate has gone public with an alternative to an Iraq version of Dien Bien Phu.
Do so. Call for the re-appointment of the Iraqi career officer corps, payment and re-arming the regular army and the transfer of control of the Iraqi metropolitian zones to the Iraqi Army, Green Lines of Control, etc., and a transitional plan that gets the last GI out of harm's way.
Our troops need the Iraqi GHQ back in operation, and at least battalion-level local command and control capability, today. Sorting out the politics can wait.
I suppose that is anti-war.
Posted by: the SO at November 10, 2003 03:54 PMoh jeez,
The SO, I don't seriously believe that anyone that helps maintain this site, with its Friday Flashback, etc. is truly Anti- Anti-War.
Your statement came out sounding that way, to me, but I can appreciate there was more context behind it that wasn't communicated.
I hope I haven't come across as judgemental of you, because that was not my intent. Likewise, I hope you judge my words for their merit or lack thereof, without coming to too-harsh a judgement of me as a person.
Posted by: Patrick (G) at November 11, 2003 12:53 AMI don't actually maintain MB's blog, beyond things like doing the MT install, and of course, reading it.
Overlooking my failings (obsessions with John Wayne's, er, Howard Dean's teeth), why is his flat roll-back plan any less daft on first-through-third glance than the pevious moronic codpiece's (Steve Forbes) flat tax plan?
Posted by: The SO at November 11, 2003 07:34 AMWell,
Moronic Codpiece's flat tax plan would have decreased his own income taxes while raising those of rather more people.
A flat roll-back would put you back at Clinton-era tax levels; hardly the world's most onerous tax levels.
Fiscally, it's not enough for the long run, of course. But it's importance is probably more psychological as a repudiation of Bush's Congress-enabled sack and loot of the Federal Treasury.
Posted by: Patrick (G) at November 11, 2003 11:06 AMThere is a divide in labor, non-manufacturing (SEIU, AFSME) on one side, others in the Justice Coalition. That's a problem.
Mistaking, and/or campaigning on a mistake, of perception (psychologic repudiation) over reality (MB's econ focus, wages), is another problem.
But who am I to criticise Dean. I simply won't vote for him, and I'm sure he doesn't loose any sleep over that.
"Mistaking, and/or campaigning on a mistake, of perception (psychologic repudiation) over reality"
hmmm, how do you figure that putting our government's fiscal affairs back in order is somehow mistaken ?
"(MB's econ focus, wages), is another problem."
No argument from me, at least not with respect to the short-term, But weren't you implying just that in your first comment ?
Look, MB's graphs shows stagnant wages after being adjusted for inflation. Dissapointing, in view of all the 'stimulus' that been injected into the economy, but strictly speaking, this is not a deterioration. Wages thus aren't a more pressing concern than they were 12 months ago. Not yet, anyway.
Plus, SIEU's members are probably better protected from a future deterioration in wages than, say, I am.
Now SIEU's members might have gotten the 2001 rebate (up to $300/wage earner, IIRC), and the 2002 child tax credit, and maybe a few bucks per paycheck from the tax rate reduction....for a total of perhaps around 1% of their average income for the past two years. Chump change, really.
I suspect that most of SIEU's members are more concerned about the increasing portion of their paychecks going to their HMOs/PPOs for less and less benefit rather than their taxes per se.
I wouldn't be surprised if their HMO/PPO's family coverage actually extracts more from their members paychecks than federal income taxes...before the deductibles and copays kick in.
So I don't follow your claim that SIEU is somehow demonstrating indifference to its members wages and benefits, in its endorsement for the Democratic nominee.
"But who am I to criticise Dean. I simply won't vote for him, and I'm sure he doesn't loose any sleep over that."
But from what I can tell, you're not criticizing Dean so much as you're criticizing the SIEU for its endorsement of Dean.
Your attack of SIEU leaders ('indifferent to their members wages and benefits', in short indifferent to their very mission) was magnitudes more vicious than your attack of Dean ('a clown').
I hope that when you talk about not voting for Dean, you mean in the democratic primary, and not next years election, should he win the nomination.
I cannot see how anyone could rationally choose the criminal over the clown.
Although, if you want to ruin Dean as a politician, you could hardly do worse than electing him to clean up Bush's messes with the 'help' of our Republican-dominated congress.
Posted by: Patrick (G) at November 11, 2003 04:51 PMThose figures are frightening. I had thought that the reason there was the increase starting in mid-April was because people were spending their tax return money. By July, that had run out.
Posted by: Trish Wilson at November 12, 2003 08:47 AMI confess to having spent part of my professional life doing wages and benefits stats in a labor law firm, so at some point every transportaion union from St. Louis west was on my desk. The notion that the current SEIU political director(s) are inerrent, or necessarily talking to their bean-counters before accepting this cycle's cup-a-koolaide is sort of wry. Am I harsh? People make mistakes. Strikes are lost, legislative agendas fail, attornies plead the wrong cases, or the wrong arguements in the right cases. The economic utility for a flat roll-back of the Bush tax cuts is absent. Some of the Dems, Dean among them, argue for it on mystical-economic grounds, or open KISS-political grounds. Core to the KISS approach to Democratic responses to the Bush tax cuts, it seems to me, is that progressive tax policy is too hard for Democrats to successfully sell in the general. I'm not interested in a campaign that can't identify with progressive taxation, when taxes go up, and when they go down.
Anyway, I'm an Indian. I can't vote for Dean. I can't abandon reciprocity.
Posted by: The SO at November 12, 2003 11:08 AM