More economics from the trenches

[John Hall]

If you want to look past the return to employment, why not look to a
broader measure like GNP/capita?  

Anyway.

These were, to my understanding, compensation / employee.

Let's see.  From 1980 to 2001 total non-farm work force is up 46% from
90.4 million to 132.2 million.  (Employment in manufacturing fell from
20.3 to 17.7 million, total goods making industries was relatively
constant from 25.7 to 25.1 million.

Statistical Abstracts has US population growing 24.8% from 1980 to 2000
(220.7M to 275.6M).

Not everyone will agree that increasing the proportion of people in the
workforce is a good idea.  Quite a bit of the above employment increases
have been a one-time transition of women into the workforce.

The US has an advantage over Japan in these statistics due to
immigration.

As to income distribution, I'd think that broad based employment
compensation stats beat most other income estimates.  It ignores the
skewing of the data due to capital gains.  I also think it was important
that the improvement in compensation was spread across all broad
employee groups.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ThosStew@aol.com [mailto:ThosStew@aol.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 12:03 PM
> To: johnhall@evergo.net; fork@xent.com
> Subject: Re: More economics from the trenches
> 
> 
> In a message dated 4/30/2002 1:48:24 PM, johnhall@evergo.net writes:
> 
> >Now, that isn't the increase in affluence an average PERSON has
gotten.
> >We aren't tracking individuals, but all of society.  So this isn't a
> >measure of what an average 40 year old would receive compared to what
he
> >got when he was 20, it is a measure of what he gets at 40 compared to
> >what other people got at 40 when he was 20.
> >
> 
> 
> And that, while not meaningless, is not meaningful either: The total
> compensation for the labor force is one thing, and it's a good thing
it's
> rising. But so is population, and so is the labor force. Per capital
> compensation, average or median, is another important measure,
andfactors
> out
> the population increase. And the distribution of that compensation is
a
> third. All are relevant. Japan, for example, has a shrinking
population
> that
> will sap its national strength ev en if per capital GDP and
compensation
> rise. But the  last two are most relevant when it comes to measuring
> standard
> of living.
> 
> T