Posted on 07/28/2005 12:25:05 PM PDT by ninenot
Median weekly earnings of the nation's 103.3 million full-time wage and salary workers were $643 in the second quarter of 2005, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported July 20.
This was 0.6 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 3.0 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) over the same period.
Wage arbitrage WORKS!!!
All Hail Free Trade!!!
under the table numbers have not yet been determined.
Could mean a lot of entry level job creation. The number of CEO's does not typically increase at a rate faster than those that work for him </Sarcasm>
If you look carefully at the latest Pubbie Plan to "save Social Security," it consists of issuing T-Bonds with "your name here" in the bearer's position.
So after 10 or 20 years of accumulating TBonds, you get what you deserve, so to speak--
When the Fed revs up the inflation engine, your TBonds will be worth...ah...less than you paid for them.
Thanks, DeMint, Green, et al., for rescuing our Government from US taxpaying retirees...
The republican plan is better than the democrat plan which is to put your head in the sand so you won't have to see the thing go bankrupt.
That's baloney! Clinton created 100 million jobs in his first year in office. There are well over 400 million full-time jobs in the US. /sarcasm
Check total compensation, which last I saw was increasing faster than inflation.
GWB's INITIAL plan was much better--equities investments were allowed.
But GWB was advised by morons. He kept downplaying the plan's best feature: the 'savings account' became personal property, and part of one's estate...YOUR OWN MONEY, unlike SS.
He didn't talk about that too much, and managed to get tangled up in the definition of 'crisis.'
"Total Compensation" does not buy groceries, nor gasoline, nor pay rent.
It can, if the employer provides benefits you'd otherwise have to pay for.
Right. As I feared, the GOP wasn't prepared for the demagoguery of the left on SS.
What might Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers mean? Does its 3% increase apply to EVERY member of the wage and salary earning people in the U.S.?
Is a farm laborer in Kentucky, for example, suffering under a 3% hike in latte or cab fare prices?
Is a full time police retiree security consultant in Texas angry because he has to pay 3% more for his steaks?
Indeed, let's see what the "under numbers" reveal.
Total Comp includes health, pension, and some very minor contributions like FUCA, SUCA, and the throw-away term life insurance...
We'll soon get to the point where health will be paid for largely by the worker/employee--either through continuing erosion of employer contributions, OR through nationalization, now becoming a priority with the bigger players in NAM (e.g.., GM, FoMoCo, and some computer-maker types.)
It's irrelevant--the point is that the labor-arbitrage with PRChina, India, et. al, is eroding the standard of living in the USA.
The question is: at what point does this erosion create a social unrest?
Using "Median" numbers is usually unhelpful without mean numbers. I can't say whether this is good or bad in this case, but let me show a hypothetical which illustrates the problem.
Suppose there are 9 workers. Last year, 4 made $300, 1 made $500, and 4 made $700. THink of this as a group of low-wage workers, a middle-wage job, and some better jobs.
Now, a year later, suppose the low-wage job pay has gone up to $400 (33% increase). The wages paid to middle-of-the-road workers stagnated, rising NOT AT ALL to $500. And the upper workers went up $70 to $770 (a 10% gain).
Guess what. The median income didn't rise at all. Using median in comparisons of entire populations of workers is stupid.
Another example. If 5% of the highest-paid workers got laid off and decided not to go back to work, the MEDIAN income could actually DROP because we lost people off the top end of the scale. Conversely, if unemployment JUMPS and a lot of poor people get laid off, the median income can jump unless you include in the income people who make NOTHING, which they don't usually do.
Of course, the mean numbers could go way up and it might just mean that rich people made a lot more money.
BTW, suppose they gave you the median GAIN. That means that if the median GAIN is .6%, 1/2 of all workers got LESS than a 0.6% raise, the other half got more. But that isn't what they are doing here, and if they did, you would have to know where on the payscale the differences are.
This reminds me of why retail sales numbers are always reported for both NEW store openings, and separately for same-store sales.
I do not know how inflation is calculated but I do know that lot's more of my paycheck is going for things like food, fuel, lights, property taxes and telephone then before. Much less spendable input, but I keep reading how inflation is low or just about zero so why do the prices I pay keep gong up and yet inflation doesn't?
My wages shot up 33% this year. Of course I had to change jobs to a company that better rewarded me for my efforts.
This is one of the most critical stats there is. This is bad, bad news.
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