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Why There Is No Wage Growth In America
Over the past 2 years the Obama administration has been desperate to boost minimum wages, usually over tedious bickering with republicans and corporations who have resisted such an increase, with neither party realizing that such a measure would not do much to actually boost aggregate spending. Instead, what Obama should have been focusing on was to limit the maximum number of hours worked per week, because as the following chart shows, the reason why weekly pay is rising and aggregate earnings is not due to an increase in hourly wages but because Americans are simply working longer hours every week: not quality but quantity.
What this means is that we can start the countdown to the next executive order which will make it illegal for any full time worker to work over 40 hours. Of course, none of that will do much since corporations have long since figured out how to eradicate the quantity problem, and increasingly American workers limited to 29.5 hours or less so their employers can avoid spending ridiculous amount of money on Obamacare.
In fact, as we have shown, over the past half year, non-supervisory workers, those who are not bosses or in any leadership positions, have seen the growth in their hourly earnings tumble...
... even as those of their bosses - naturally - has soared!
Meanwhile, as we showed earlier this week in "Home What A Permabull Thinks Is The Biggest Threat To The Stock Market", the main reason behind America's depressed economy is that its workers, scrambling to achieve higher wages, and yet distracted by a countless number of iGizmos and numerous other reasons, have suffered an unprecedented collapse in productivity to never before seen levels.
And what all of the above goes back to, is one simple thing: an unprecedented amount of labor slack in the work force as can be seen by the following chart not of the unemployment rate, which can easily be manipulated and fudged by adjusting the number of Americans not in the labor force, but by the ratio of civilian employment to the total US population. This, clearly, is at depressionary levels.
Good luck with those rate hikes dear Janet Yellen...
The bottom line culprit: a record 92.9 million Americans not in the labor force. Until this primary problem plaguing the US economy is fixed, nothing else can be.
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Billiionaires pissing $$ down toilet to "foundations" is not helping much either.. think of what could be done with those billions to employ people? Smh
http://hedgeaccordingly.com/2015/03/tim-cook-will-donate-entire-785-mill...
What you talkin' about, Willis? All those foundations are doing God's work. Well, if you are a Satanist of course.
.
The corporate whore Obama don't give a fuck.
we exported the only thing the fed looks at"wage inflation" to the slave nations long ago, along
with our middle class, and its never coming back.
really points up how stupid the fed is with their grand devaluation.
Wait a minute, France employes the strategy of controlling weekly hours, so there is data available there.
It does explain why there is no pressure on wages for some jobs where there should probably be upward pressure.
This whole limiting hours worked is horse shit.
I'm thankful I work with a company that pays well and offers as much OT as I'm willing to work. Any day off worked is automatically time and a half with plenty of room for advancement through the company, on 12 hours days working DuPont schedule.
I don't take home 200+ hour bi weekly checks because I need the money. I do it because that opportunity won't be there forever.
As long as PM's are cheap and I still am employed I will continue to hedge accordingly.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... http://goo.gl/9YqZBb
The people who work at those foundations think real hard about and discuss big issues, and are really important people, and are entitled to flexible, minimal work hours and huge pay, because it's really hard work thinking about such big issues. Those are really important jobs, you know, and you shouldn't criticize them because they really do good things.
You shouldn't bother or worry yourself with any of this, because little people wouldn't understand it anyway because it's all so complicated, so it's best to keep your thoughts to yourself and let these foundations and those in their employ do the heavy-lifting of thinking and shaping public policy for you.
If you want to employ people in vast numbers, then there must be some new game-changing invention.
There ain't one (yet).
Yeah, like monetarily incentivizing 'See Something Say Something'........
Wrong. Polish mine detector.
Eliminate the minimum wage.
Good idea, if you eliminate the oligarchy. Otherwise they'll just pay people $2 an hour. Also, the rich would be sorry if minimum wages were eliminated. People could then afford to pay someone $2 an hour to stand at public bathroom doors and charge an entry fee, like they do in 3rd world countries.
Eliminate government.
Its cost is half the year's output and produces virtually nothing of value.
Maybe if the brightest minds in physics and mathematics weren't working for investment banks, they could be creating the next game changing invention. Its a symptom of the financialization of the country.
"they could be creating the next game changing invention" - there is no such thing and it will never be. GREED - this is our doom and there is no otherway to learn it but going trough the pains of a rebirth.
The rebirth is nothing more than a dead cat bounce....
Sometime a splat is just a splat.
Game changer is finance... That is all. We have to take control of our money, it wouldn't be perfect, but we woudln't be slaves anymore.
There's already been a game-changing invention sysin3. In the same way that tractors put all the plow horses out of work robotics and computers have put people out of work and, whenever possible, what couldn't be automated was exported. Those jobs are never coming back. The middle and working classes are as anachronistic as all those horses and just as doomed.
There is no growth in wages, because the cancerous growth of government has strangled everything else.
and because corporations aren't investing in R&D or CapEx, but buying back their own stocks and paying executives huge bonuses, while outsourcing jobs.
DAMN YOU FOR YOUR TRUTH........ugh....sorry, I thought I was Lloyd there for a minute. Need another drink. Shit, I hope I don't go "Munger".
OK, but government policy contributes to both, in the form of ZIRP to finance buybacks, and a 35% penalty on repatriating profit to discourage investment and encourage outsourcing.
Nonsense
As the article explains, whatever increases in Income are being realized, it's because people with (low paying) jobs are working longer.
That would be like the Israelites having to make more bricks for Pharaoh, to get extra food. (If you believe that story, given that although Egyptians were meticulous record keepers, there is still No corroborating archeological evidence to support the Egyptian slavery & Exodus story.)
If there were such evidence, what would it mean to you?
Looks like they weren't as meticulous as the Israelites.
We have an over supply problem with labor. The government's solution, from both sides of the aisle, is to increase immigration. Democrats get more voters and Republicans satisfy their H1-B demanding employers. Both parties are actively working against the interests of the voters at large.
This is an unstable situation and presages the introduction of a disruptive third party, or other forms of conflict, some potentially violent.
With increased immigration, Democrats get more voters and the H1-B demanding employers who support Democrats (such as Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) get cheaper labor.
The Silicon Valley-San Francisco corridor is one of the most solidly liberal regions in the country and the leading tech companies based in the area send over four-fifths of their contributions to Democratic candidates.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2014/01/09/how-silicon-valley-cou...
There is no wage growth in the US because the 50/60 year old folk had too many kids, didn't save enough, made bad investments etc and are now stuck in the jobs they have hated all those years but can no longer leave. in many cases they can easily be replaced by three people from India for less money. While the CEOs shine.
Oh not again passing the blame to the small guy! Who has the power to remove the means of life from a social enclave basicly stiling it from its memebers, the small dude or the fatso? This is basically social terorism and the bisonians are so dumbed down that's can't see it because of the Kardashian ass.
But why are Americans working longer hours?
It's because of the unequal taxation of wages and capital gains.
Why human cattle in India and China slave labor camps do?
Daylight savings time.........
Cause they have no savings, and they have to put off retirement.
So much of our problems are caused by the debt based world and our penchant for no savings and an icing of "got to have it now"
Good question. If you're a part-time worker with two jobs totaling 35 hours or more a week, to the government you are classifed as a full-time worker.
Tess Vigeland of NPR explains:
“ Take a close look at employment figures, and you find that of all the people the government labels as full-time workers 6 to 11 percent of those are only full-time because they're cobbling together two or more part-time jobs.”
Here’s how the federal government determines a part-time worker according to economist Susan Lambert of the University of Chicago, who studies how parat-time jobs are affecting the economy.
“The Census Bureau - the Bureau of Labor Statistics both ask people how many hours do you usually work or how many hours did you work last week. And if you say 35 or more, they classify you as being a full-time worker. Now that doesn't mean that you have a full-time job, but that you're a full-time worker. If you've - report a number less than 35 hours, they ask you why. And the people give a range of reasons. And only if they say I'm working less than 35 hours because I couldn't find a full-time job or my employer cut my hours, are they classified as being what we call involuntary part-time. And, in fact, in the other studies, instead, what people are asked is a work hour preference - would you like to continue to work the same hours for the same pay, more hours for more pay, fewer hours for less pay. And when people are asked that question, a much larger proportion of people say I would like more hours for more pay.”
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/24/342965857/despite-economic-recovery-millions-of-workers-stuck-in-part-time-jobs
And then, the federal government subsidizes the corporations further by supplying these underpaid part-timers with all the taxpayer largesse it can provide for them to make ends meet, such as Section 8 housing.
The government means these figures to lie to misrepresent the true employment picture and add to government power.
At the battery plant that I do contract work at, they lowered the starting pay for new hires to 11.26/hr. These guys are worked to death around the clock. Most new hires don't last a month. These guys literally sleep in the plant on a cot while they die slowly from lead poison. Sad.
latinos ?
That's exactly the same happening to the canon meat cheap youngsters they bring from Asia with temporary visas to replace North American Software/IT engineers, I seen horrors, people working 24X7 bringing sleeping bags and sleeping under workstation, slavery on the open. I seen a colleague of mine north American crying like a kid when we came in the office in the morning and found the kids sleeping on the floor.
Why does no one figure out the obvious - most folks are working for cash, not "reportable wages?" And thus they have opted out of the "participation statistic. Duh?
No CapEx, No infrastructure, No small mom and pop businesses. 29.5 was the final nail in the middle class coffin.
Because we live the Middle Class Holocaust era
https://www.facebook.com/groups/452769544871510/
So... far less than 6M have been wiped out in the Middle Class (per Middle Class Holohoax deniers), or far more than 6M have been wiped out in the Middle Class (per Job-ites)?
Most people under 60 don't have any clue how fucked up Americka is,because they we're never around when the pussy was free,the jobs were plentiful,and you could tell your asshole boss to fuck off,and have another job the next day..
Yup, that's called real liberty not the perverted fakery of today. You know, in Eastern Europe people had the courage to fight to death for it, but for that it takes balls and unperverted belief in humanist values.
With a little help from USA NGO's in eastern Europe. Bigger geopolitical aims just happened to help the population. Not so in Ukraine today.
@henry chucho
"Most people under 60 don't have any clue how fucked up Americka is"
And once upon a time, in a land called America, the people would come in from their mountain cabins, farms, and mill towns with their young ones to joy in the closeness of community on warm sultry summer nights. The American dream was never about grand mansions, designer wear, exotic vacations, health clubs, silicone implants, Viagra love affairs, fortress malls, boutiques, forever war, the prison industry, or slave labor junk stores. It was about a man being able to make a living for his family. It was about a simple life of small town living, where people congregated on Main Street for the Fourth of July parade. It was about swimming holes, country lanes, fields of corn, teachers who challenged the young to greater heights (not social engineering! ), doctors (not technocrats), marshland songs, a whippoorwill, splashing streams, and woodlands with secret paths. It was about rain washed streets; where barefoot children splashed in puddles, blew magic bubbles, caught fireflies, and played hide-and-seek long into a muggy summer's night. It was about concerts in the park, the clink of milk bottles, and visits to Grandma's house; with her blue hair, flowered dress, and flour dusted apron. It was about the certainty of love with the slamming of a screen door, a child running in flowered meadows, and at day's end, neighbors gathered on darkened porches, holding tight the wonderment of the day. It was about Hometown.
— Judith Moriarty
So accurate that it hurts to see it gone, especially after you experienced it for real ...
@Luc X. Ifer
It was another world, brother, another world
[Sigh] This wasn't just true in the US, but in Europe also.
People had far less 'stuff', but far more time to take in things around them. Electronics hasn't really made our lives fundamentally better, but only 'better' in a superficial and titillating way.
Well, at least white America.
note the low levels of participation in the 50's 60's......stay at home moms and one wage earner.
Very well could be people are choosing life instead of constant slavery to the almighty dollar.
Just an alternative thought.
Tell this to the "Americans are SO productive" crowd.
Not just oligarchs are making off like bandits.
Look at your neighbours: anyone in resource industries, in managerial/technical, or in government is doing VERY well, thank you. They never lost income during the "crisis", never lost their jobs, and now have all the RVs, F-150 trucks, quad bikes, NFLX subscriptions and new gas barbecues...
How can wages go UP when immigration brings millions into the nation yearly? Supply and Demand. You will NEVER see the mainstream media discuss that...
IT worker replaced by foreign labor regrets voting for Obama
Laid-off worker pleads with Senate panel to stem tide of cheap labor
American tech employees forced to train H-1B replacements
California imports foreign guest workers to process unemployment claims
A U.S. visa allows people to come to the country for high-tech jobs. Feb. 24, 2015 News10/KXTV
Obamacare gives firms $3k incentive to hire illegals over native-born workers
http://washtech.org/news/industry/display.php?ID_Content=5363
Another tech-worker, Diane Drozdowski, was forced out of her job at American Express in Phoenix, AZ. After her manager used "bully tactics and psychological warfare" to try to get her to quit, resulting in a mental breakdown, she was replaced by two Indian workers based in India. American Express flew these Indian workers to Phoenix and forced her to train them, upon threat of losing her severance pay.
The reason you will never see it discussed by the mainstream media is that besides the financial industry the IT industry is the next as biggest economic scam/ponzi scheme in the modern world, as a friend of mine profoundly disgusted by it called it as the new *Fashion Industry*, a mostly completely useless accumulation of effort and money without any real benefit - even worse, counter benefiting to the social enclave but solely of the ones who own it.
Isn't the end game obvious: wage arbitrage until all wages per role are basically even, worldwide....
This game is probably timed to a switch to a global currency.
I don't object to wage arbitrage, in itself. I no more want to see Indians or Chinese living in abject poverty, than I do my fellow Americans. What i fear, is the adoption of the culture and government policies that reduced those nations to poverty in the first place.
Middle class - yes, Virginia, there was a middle class - moms didn't have to work back then as they do now. I know because I was one. I went to college and did work part time by the 80's - because by that time, moms had to - but I was able to work hours while my husband was home with the boys. Now I have to work as full time as is possible, which is ususally about 20 hours a week max. Should've finished law school and, like one of my many attorney cousins, become an immigration attorney doing H1B Visas, solely, for my bread and butter. Ah, well. Cest la vie.
Exactly, now the participation rate is at late 70's rates, when women were just coming in droves to the market place for jobs. It is amazing how high % the workforce of women is now and the participation rate is so low. Must mean a ton of men on disability, can't find work worth doing for the pay, and jobs are gone and never coming back. At least some companies seem to be letting people who have been there for 15+ years leave by attrition before sending the jobs to asia. I have no idea what the youngsters will do, college does not really seem worth it now, unless you do the community college 1st, no loans, work as you go, no debt. All the good paying jobs are about gone. Maybe Nike will setup some factories in US for min wage, if min wage drops to $2.50 per day?
Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell my fellow ZHer's that my husband was replaced by two H1B Visa workers and was made to train his two replacements. Nice, huh?
@robnume
"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell my fellow ZHer's that my husband was replaced by two H1B Visa workers and was made to train his two replacements. Nice, huh?"
Madam more than you know have been affected by the replacement of Whites in employment. It is not happenstance it is by DESIGN. But you would never know it if the mainstream media is your only source of information. They are the Gatekeepers keeping Whites distracted and ignorant of what is being done to them, whether economic destruction or the violence of the streets:
Mike Brown question sparks MetroLink beating caught on video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L32MwMAjV2M
Raw Video: Metrolink Attack
KMOX1120 Published on Mar 27, 2015
A video recorded on a St. Louis Metrolink train shows a group of men attacking a passenger. Cops Post Video of Brutal Beating in Attempt to ID Suspects; YouTube Removes
The attackers "APPEARED" to be black!!
Indianapolis Playground Beating: Girl and Her Little Brother Brutally Attacked in Park March 15, 2015
The Indianapolis playground beating may have been racially motivated. The victim and her brother were white and the attackers appeared to be black. As the victim was asking why she was being attacked, one of the boys in the group appeared to answer, “You white, bitch.”
Young Girl and Little Brother attacked
Video posted on facebook or brutal attack on a female and her little brother
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b10_1426395873
http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/ll_a_s/2015/Mar/18/LiveLeak-dot-com-63b_... The NAACP blames it on schools too tough on African-Americans!
Guess Why This Is Not News: Four ‘Teens’ Murder 94 Year-Old Woman in MississippiTom Blumer, NewsBusters, March 11, 2015
http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/FourArrestedMeridianMSmurder0315.png
http://emanuelcountylive.com/2015/03/eva-todd-carmichael-94/
Eva Todd Carmichael, 94
by Katelyn Moore March 3, 2015 12:40 pm
Last Updated: March 3, 2015 at 1:10 pm
emanuelcountylive.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Carmichael-obit.jpg
Well, another step closer to the point where the hell is going to break loose, and this is the beginning of the interracial war engineered and nurtured by the neo-aristocracy with the old purpose of 'Divide and Reign',
turn the cattle one against the other and lead supreme from behind the palace curtains.
The media has covered up the massive scale of anti-white racial violence for forty years. The truth is starting to come out now because of phone cameras and the internet.
A few years back a fellow working for Bank of America had to do the same... when he was terminated he committed suicide. Upon hearing this I immediately terminated my account with them,,, but unfortunately most americans have no sense of unity and felt it would be too much a hassle.
Now had americans stuck together that bank would be gone, and replacing americans with H1B workers would be reduced massively,,, but it's not to be.
A lot of the shit going on could have been stopped easily but it cramped americans style. Now it's starting to get really tough and there is little that can be done... peacefully.
We are all being replaced by machines and software programmed by Indians. I see them everywhere.
I am a professional software programmer. I avoid being replaced by H1-Bs, by being better at my job. Competition is a fact of life - all life, everywhere. Don't let politicians tell you that they can protect you from it, that's just a scam.
This is such of a stereotype that has become just pure *BS* - obviously you are either in the management, either one of the imported cattle, either making a life by taking a cut of the slave trade dough, either a political activist, either an asocial psychopath willing to live like a slave working 24x7 for a continuously dropping wage having as only fun in life gaming, eating pizza, drinking coke, smoking crack and watching porn with peers like himself as socializing, either just a pure brain washed ignorant red neck. Even the field professionals working in very narrow niches not affected by the phenomenon know the reality the others have to face so obviously you can't be part of the industry at this level. You just can't be part of the people who understand and enjoy the life the way presented few posts above by Laddie by citing Judith Moriarty.
how many times we have to repeat it - https://youtu.be/Xbp6umQT58A - till it will reach a significant threshold ?!
managed decline............
Planned obsolescence :)
Are you Yellen? http://youtu.be/qGErnbAVqGs?t=0s
And sing all together now … We All live in a Yellen Submarine!, Yellen Submarine! http://youtu.be/qE0B5rYdy8I?t=0s
...red terror and correction camps will become a great force for employment of the masses...plus+, since enemies of the state will be eliminated...there will be great number of shovel ready jobs for presently unemployed....
Good job feminazis. Instead of staying home, you've created a glut of low skilled workers saturating the job market. Now labor and wages are on the employer's terms. Rockefeller, you bastard.
Still think we will be seeing some suprise growth in wages over the next few months as the Walmart, Target and other non announced wage increases begin to hit the system. If so could spark Fed rate fears out of the blue.
Oh, yeah after spending time, money and effort for more than 12 years in school the bisonian should praise his masters for creating an economical landscape where the only jobs are provided by Walmart, Target, McDonald's, Starbucks etc. Asian style *democrato-fascist* slave labor camps, kiss the hands of the lords when taking weekly turns to pick up their tickets for the daily ratio of subsistence fodder.
In Econ 101, prices (wages) increase due to an increase in demand or a reduction in supply. This author has things backwards. He argues that an increase in supply (labor force participation) will raise wages. FAIL!!!! Give the man an "F."
Real median wages for men basically stopped increasing in 1973. Since then they have decreased during recessions and recovered thereafter, but have basically stopped growing other than cyclically.
Wages will increase cyclically as the labor market tightens. The best measure of labor market tightness is the U-6 unemployment rate ( http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS13327709?years_option=all_years ). This rate was 8.4% in late 2007 before the Great Recession of December 2007 to June 2009. It spiked to 17.1% during the downturn. It is now down to 11%. As it continues to decline to its pre-recession level due to increased demand, wages will recover more rapidly.
To understand the labor force participation rate one must look at it historically. When we started tracking this rate in 1948, workers were mostly men. The participation rate (LFPR) for men was 87%; for women it was 33%.
The rate for men has been declining since 1948, declining from 87% to its current 69%. Since the rate is for all men over the age of 16, two main factors are driving this decline: 1) men are spending more time in school as they finish high school and go to college; and 2) at the other end of their life spans men are living longer after they stop working. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300001?years_option=all_years So a declining LFPR is NOT new. It has been happening since the late 1940's.
This was masked in the overall LFPR by increased participation for women through 2000, especially after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited most discrimination against women. Women's LFPR increased from that 33% in the late 1940's to 60% in 2000, before beginning its decline as women started to retire in larger numbers.
Yes, the LFPR has also declined due to the Great Recession, and some recovery will occur. But the overall trend is down and will continue down as the baby boomers continue to retire.
The same is true for rising cost of living, masked further by credit. Now there is nothing left to mask the truth.
mass immigration - obviously
Let me tell you jack asses something 20 years ago that is right to years ago. Me a high school drop out, made 7.25 an hour.
I worked 12 hrs a day 7 days a week more than 8 months of the year. I got time and a half over 40hr. I got double time for Saturday and triple time for Sundays and holidays.
Medical and Dental.
And a pension.
I only wish I could live long enough to see you generations retirement phase.
Houses and 401k worth nothing. I really feel sorry what yous have had to accept as wages and retirement.
http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=54e15824a1c6 An analogy.