Working Life

Well, bravo for the president for going to fight for a rise in the minimum wage. But, let’s be clear — this isn’t going to do much to raise people out of poverty.

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Austerity is a bad thing. As I’ve pointed out before, when an economy is suffering from lower demand, the last thing you want to do is squeeze the pocketbooks of the very people who you want to have out there spending money. But, here’s another thing: it makes you sick. Literally.

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   What does it mean when corporate profits are up–but people aren’t buying enough to sustain those profits? As in this report today via The Wall Street Journal: A record number of U.S. companies beat earnings expectations in the third quarter, but a big portion of their profits came from cost-cutting, disappointing investors who were [...]

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   I’ve made the point a lot that productivity has, over the past 30 years, soared while wages have remained flat in real terms over that period of time. That is important because when people are more productive at work that, in theory, should translate into wage increase.    Well, here is a productivity number [...]

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Today brings in stark relief the economic chasm in America: the Depression is here, if you measure what real people are going through, but, on Wall Street, the party continues as, in Marie Antoinette style, financial executives reap millions while the rest of the people grasp for crumbs.   Today, David Leonhardt has an excellent [...]

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   The Wall Street Journal has a story today looking at what a modern depression would look like. The story asserts: There is no consensus definition for "depression." Harvard University economist Robert Barro defines it as a decline in per-person economic output or consumption of more than 10%, and puts the odds of a depression [...]

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  I am watching the parade of outraged leaders–especially Democrats–who are railing about the AIG bonuses and, to be honest, I’m far more disgusted by the outrage then the chump change being argued over. Because the outrage masks this fact: virtually our entire political and economic leadership has turned a blind eye, and actually endorsed, [...]

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  Yes, that is the underlying message delivered today by one of the world’s leading financial publications. For many of us, this is no surprise: you had to be truly ignorant to pretend like the economic system was a success just based on the growing divide between rich and poor over the past decade, and [...]

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Every day, there is another example of the conspiracy of silence that pervades the traditional media’s description of the current economic crisis. Sure, de-regulation, greed and pure stupidity has a lot to do with it. But, in truth, the underlying reason for the collapse has been a persistent war on the wages of American workers. [...]

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   Well, duh. We needed a group of economists to tell us what we already know and felt for a long time. And you have to wonder: were they asleep since it took them until now to tell us that, by their reckoning, the recession began a year ago. From the Financial Times: Evidence of [...]

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   It’s enlightening to read the economic data popping out from the various number crunchers. Guess what? Productivity climbed beyond anyone’s expectations, according to this story on The Wall Street Journal’s website this morning: Nonfarm business productivity jumped 4.3%, at an annual rate, in the second quarter, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s almost double [...]

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   I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the ability of government statistics, economists and prognosticators–pretending to be in the last cateogry myself sometimes–to accurately portray what is actually happening to people. Government stats like Gross Domestic Product don’t tell you much other than stuff is being made–it doesn’t really give you a good picture [...]

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    A few days ago, I got a copy of a report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) that looks at some global employment trends. The report has got some good data–but, memo to the folks at the ILO, it is really written way too boringly (spice it up!!!). Do you want people to read [...]

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Just a couple of days ago, I was musing about the disconnect between wages and productivity. That is, productivity was racing ahead yet wages were pretty dismal. That’s not the way the deal is supposed to work—if workers are laboring their little tushes off in the workplace so that every hour worked is a more [...]

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I see the Consumer Price Index and the reality of workers wages are giving out more signs of the increased pressure on the average worker. My friends at the Economic Policy Institute point out that prices are rising faster than wages. For the 11th consecutive month, prices have risen faster than wages (click the image [...]

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