Keyword: wages
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One of the seven principles of sound public policy is that we consider long-run effects and all people, not short-run effects and a few people. The latest push for an increase in the minimum wage could use more of a consideration of the long-term effects on all people. The stated goal of proponents for a higher minimum wage is to help struggling families, according to Fight for 15, the union-sponsored group supporting fast food strikes around the country. In 2012, however, 55 percent of all minimum wage workers were between 16 and 24 years old, according to the Bureau of...
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Switzerland will vote on Sunday on whether to limit the salaries of top executives so they don't earn more in a month than the lowest paid workers earn in a year, a move that could mean big pay cuts for business leaders earning millions. The so-called 1:12 initiative for Fair Pay, the latest attempt to narrow a growing wage gap in one of the world's wealthiest nations, was brought about by the youth wing of the Social Democrats (JUSO), who gathered the 100,000 signatures needed to force a nationwide vote. Despite its high standard of living, Switzerland is a generally...
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POLITICS Obama courting CEOs on immigration widens conservative split, raises issue of corporate motives Published November 10, 2013 FoxNews.com President Obama's courting of top U.S. executives this week to help get the Republican-controlled House to pass immigration reform is furthering the divide among conservatives, with a top GOP senator and others suggesting corporate America is lending its support with hopes of getting more access to low-cost immigrant labor. The president said before the White House meeting Tuesday that he and others who support comprehensive immigration reform passed in the Senate know the “politics are challenging” in the House and that...
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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real median earnings of Americans dropped in the third quarter of 2013. blsheaderrealmedianwage According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the great recession ended in June 2009. Since the end of the Great Recession, real median earnings for Americans have dropped 3.5%. Any wonder why mortgage purchase applications are so low … mbapurchase1995 and money velocity is dying? m2velosp20
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To help you keep track of where both sides stand in the BART contract negotiations, here are our best estimates of current average salaries by bargaining unit based on the 2012 Public Employee Salary Database. This page will be updated as new contracts are proposed. Last updated 5:26 pm Oct. 14 to reflect the latest contract proposal by BART management.
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As she shook her bare backside for the sparse afternoon crowd at Rick’s Cabaret, the dancer introduced as Vanessa appeared to be more committed to her work than the typical clock-puncher. But a federal judge ruled on Tuesday that she and her fellow strippers were hourly workers who deserved at least the minimum wage. The judge, Paul A. Engelmayer of the Southern District, ruled that the dancers who strip to their G-strings and stilettos every day and night at Rick’s are indeed employees protected by federal and state labor laws. The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf...
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... a local burger joint outside of Detroit, Mich. is going to start to paying $15 an hour to new employees on October 1. Moo Cluck Moo is currently paying its entry level employees $12 an hour, far above the state minimum wage of $7.40. “We always wanted to be at $15 an hour. It just feels human to do it. It’s not an easy job to do.
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As we enter the Labor Day weekend when we are supposed to be celebrating hard-working Americans, we get the monthly personal income and spending numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Personal income rose .. 0.1% in July. pitab083013 compensation of employees, the core component of personal income, fell by $21.9 billion, the was the biggest monthly slide decline since May 2012. pi083013 Another view of declining employee compensation. Compensation Employees_0 And my favorite chart of declining real household income: household-income-monthly-median-growth-since-2000 Chicago Purchasing Managers Index printed at 53.0 in August, up from 52.3 in July. But there was a...
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On August 29th, the day after the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, fast-food workers around the nation are planning to strike for better pay and working conditions. Workers going on strike are demanding $15 an hour wages, mirroring the demand for $2 an hour the organizers of the 1963 march made.
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A front-page Wall Street Journal article published at the beginning of this week (see link below) and other news reports are calling public attention to the fact that, after many years of decline, manufacturing employment in the U.S. has modestly rebounded since the end of the Great Recession. Unfortunately, the Journal account and others appearing in major media outlets ignore data showing that even as the total number of manufacturing jobs increased by roughly 480,000 from 2009 to 2012, the number of factory jobs held by unionized workers fell by nearly 130,000. (Our source for these figures and those in...
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GALESBURG, Ill. — In a week when he tried to focus attention on the struggles of the middle class, President Obama said in an interview that he was worried that years of widening income inequality and the lingering effects of the financial crisis had frayed the country’s social fabric and undermined Americans’ belief in opportunity. Upward mobility, Mr. Obama said in a 40-minute interview with The New York Times, “was part and parcel of who we were as Americans.” “And that’s what’s been eroding over the last 20, 30 years, well before the financial crisis,” he added. “If we don’t...
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The average wage of a U.S. worker was $1,000 per week in the fourth quarter of 2012, or 4.7% higher from the same time in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In some areas, pay rose than 10%. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, the average wage grew by nearly 25%, more than any area in the country. Based on the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, these are the cities with the biggest increases in pay.Click here to see the cities where wages are soaringClick here to see the cities where wages are plummetingIn an...
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Yesterday, Texas came a knocking. While most would assume that with the Lone Star State’s love of guns would pair the two together better than peas and carrots, Gov. Rick Perry will have to bring more than just a box of chocolates and some bright red roses. He aims to woo them with things like low taxes, fewer regulations and offer an economic incentive package. On top of the sweet talk, Perry has been laying ground work since the National Rifle Association’s annual convention last month (check out his intro video) and, as of his arrival yesterday, with TV and...
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One of the most common arguments for allowing more immigration is that there is a “need” for foreign workers to do “jobs that Americans won’t do,” especially in agriculture. One of my most vivid memories of the late Armen Alchian, an internationally renowned economist at UCLA, involved a lunch at which one of the younger members of the economics department got up to go get some more coffee. Being a considerate sort, the young man asked, “Does anyone else need more coffee?” “Need?” Alchian said loudly, in a cutting tone that clearly conveyed his dismay and disgust at hearing an...
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Real Wages Decline Again — Literally No One Notices Kenneth Thomas, Middle Class Political Economist Jun. 1, 2013, 12:09 PM You read it here first: Real wages fell 0.2% in 2012, down from $295.49 (1982-84 dollars) to $294.83 per week, according to the 2013 Economic Report of the President. Thus, a 1.9% increase in nominal wages was more than wiped out by inflation, marking the 40th consecutive year that real wages have remained below their 1972 peak. Yet no one in the media noticed, or at least none thought it newsworthy. I searched the web and the subscription-only Nexis news...
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For folks too young or too unaware what has happened to our economy the past 30 years, here is an answer. Ronald Reagan, G.H.W. Bush and the Republican Party are responsible for what we know as "Reaganomics," an economy that continues today resulting in few "labor unions” and the resulting low wages and lack of worker benefits. Newly elected Reagan’s (1981) first attack on the middle class economy was his dismantling a labor union representing 11,000 striking air traffic controller employees, whom he “fired.” Their PATCO union was destroyed. Reagan and his rich, conservative friends (not one who needed job...
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One of the measures I like to follow is the spread between real GDP growth and potential real GDP growth. Potential GDP is the highest level of real Gross Domestic Product output that can be sustained over the long term. As of the end of 2012, the output gap (potential – actual real GDP growth) logged in at $840 billion. And that is just for Q4 2012. Notice that the US has been running almost a trillion dollars in subpar performance per quarter since 2009. Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas from University of Chicago gave a lecture in 2011 where he...
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Consumer spending propped up our weak economic numbers long enough to get President Obama through the election – which is one reason that he used to treat his “payroll tax cut” raid on Social Security funding as the most important #60Dollars in every American’s life, before suddenly and silently dropping it during the fiscal cliff showdown.
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Americans are a lot better at belt-tightening than the people they send to Washington. As Americans’ income fell by 3.6 percent in January, President Obama and Congressional leaders were warning of the dire consequences of sequester, the budgetary booby trap that forces cuts of as little as a third of that from the mammoth federal spending plan. Working stiffs sucked it up and absorbed the biggest monthly drop in income in 20 years, while the elected officials insisted that the federal budget had no fat to trim. Financial planning experts say if Americans can take such a big bite out...
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