[expat_panama]

"...how much economic devastation has to occur in the U.S. economy before you open your eyes..."

 

Weekends are a great time for hyperventilating --enjoy! 

When everyone gets finished running around circles I'd be grateful if someone could tell me where that headline came from.  I mean, the post didn't mention wages, the link didn't, and the BLS numbers have--

-- private hourly wages at an all time high.

[DannyTN]

It looks like the headline came from the third paragraph which reads:

"Unit labor costs in nonfarm businesses fell 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2013, the combined effect of a 3.8 percent decrease in hourly compensation and the 0.5 percent increase in productivity. The decline in hourly compensation is the largest in the series, which begins in 1947." - article

Your graph doesn't show a 3.8% quarter to quarter decline so your series is either year to year changes or not what the BLS was referring to.

[DannyTN]

Do you have that chart in real wages?

[DannyTN]

Do you have that chart in real wages?

[Will88]

You need to find out what the chart represents. $24.00 per hour? That’s definitely not the average hourly pay of Americans who’re actually paid by the hour.

The chart might represent loaded hourly compensation, including all benefitis, i.e., medical insurance benefit, company FICA and unemployment, contributions to retirement, etc.

Or it might be a calculation on an average hourly basis of pay for all employees including salaried employees.

But $24.00 per hour is definitely not just the basic hourly pay of workers paid strictly by the hour.

[kabar]

Over the past 40 years, a period in which U.S. GDP per capita more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, the annual earnings of the median prime-aged male have actually fallen by 28 percent. Indeed, males at the middle of the wage distribution now earn about the same as their counterparts in the 1950s! This decline reflects both stagnant wages for men on the job, and the fact that, compared with 1969, three times as many men of working age don’t work at all.