More economics from the trenches

[Owen Byrne]

> > At this point in my life I really wish I had employment in a
> > traditionally female field of labor. Everyone is overworked and
underpaid.
>
> Huh? You *want* to be "overworked and underpaid"?
>
As opposed to not being paid at all.

>
> > In the
> > United States, home of wealth and prosperity, the average salary
increase
> > after inflation from 1980 - 1995 was 4% (I don't have a source, I heard
it
> > on the radio). That's not annual salary increase, that's total.
>
> That section should have had a little, "[*] NOT TRUE" notation!
>
> I'll see your "I heard it on the radio" statistic-of-unclear-origin-and-
> credibility and raise it with a published source, with actual statitistics
> and quotes from people who've been carefully studying the economy. See:
>
>     http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_13/b3776001.htm
>
> The main point:
>
>     The key is that wage growth accelerated dramatically for most
>     American workers in the 1990s business cycle. Real wage gains
>     for private-sector workers averaged 1.3% a year, from the beginning
>     of the expansion in March, 1991, to the apparent end of the recession
>     in December, 2001. That's far better than the 0.2% annual wage gain
>     in the 1980s business cycle, from November, 1982, to March, 1991. The
>     gains were also better distributed than in the previous decade.
>     Falling unemployment put many more people to work and swelled salaries
>     across the board: Everyone from top managers to factory workers to
>     hairdressers benefited. Indeed, the past few years have been "the best
>     period of wage growth at the bottom in the last 30 years," says
>     Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University.
>
Actually my "I heard it on the radio" story comes out to be of the same
order as your "Read it in Business Week":
1980-1991 0.2%*11 years
1991-1995 0.8%*4 years (based on avg. 1.3 from 1991-2001, but 2.1% from
1997-2001)
Total 5.4%.

A brief perusal of Mr. Katz's work at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1538
suggests some groups have done significantly better than the average - "more
educated, more skilled and females." have done better. That suggests to me
that using some minutely different definition of the labour force could
lower the statistic significantly. Finally move it to Canada and 4% looks
pretty good.

I'll admit some general crankiness.

Owen