On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 11:16:49PM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: > I may have just found the source of our differences. I have been > focusing on the median income: the money made by the person in the > middle. I think your compensation costs are the mean compensation > costs. The change in those numbers have been quite different.
The numbers I am working with are averages. But there a significant difference between compensation and average hourly earnings even when both are measured as averages. According to the BLS: "Compensation is a measure of the cost to the employer of securing the services of labor. It includes wages and salaries, supplements (like shift differentials, all kinds of paid leave, bonus and incentive payments, and employee discounts), and employer contributions to employee-benefit plans (like medical and life insurance, workmen's compensation, and unemployment insurance). The measures of compensation published alongside the productivity measures include an imputation of the earnings of the self-employed. This is because the output of proprietorships is included in our output measures." Here is a graph comparing growth rates of various measures of wages, salaries, benefits, and compensation as measured by the BLS (all values are nominal, but I also plotted the personal consumption expenditure index as a visual baseline for inflation): http://erikreuter.net/econ/ahe_eciw.png -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
