Yes the ECI includes the cost of health insurance and other fringe
benefits. It is, of course, what employers care about, but it's no
measure of worker welfare. The earnings numbers in the productivity
series do the same thing. The BLS's official "real earnings" series uses
the CPI-W (W for wage-earners) rather than the standard CPI-U (Urban
consumers), which shows slightly lower inflation, and therefore slightly
better real wage performance than the CPI-U (damn electronic syntax).
If you junk price indexes and look at the cost of real things, the real
wage decline over the long term is even more dramatic. Workers earning
the average wage must work 40-50% longer now than 20 years ago to buy the
average house or car, or to cover the average household's annual expenses
(according to the BLS's Consumer Expenditure Survey) - and about 75%
longer to cover the cost of a year at either Yale or UCLA. I have the
exact figs if anyone's interested.
There was a little blip in real earnings in late-93/early-94, but that's
safely past!
Doug
Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)
On Mon, 4 Apr 1994, Jim Devine wrote:
> according to BUSINESS WEEK (April 11, 1994: p. 20), real wages are
> *rising*. "... cheer up: The long earnings drought i#s am
> may be over. After adjustying #for inflation, wages and salsaries
> in the fourth quarter of 1993 were 0.8% higher than a year earlier."
> Of course, "that's based on the Labor Dept.'s Eemployment cost
> index..." # which includes the (rising) cost of medical
> care, no?
>
> in pen-l solidarity,
>
> Jim Devine BITNET: jndf@lmuacad INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA
> 310/338-2948 (off); 310/202-6546 (hm); FAX: 310/338-1950
> if bitnet address fails, try [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
