Doug's prompts have interested me a lot - more than a lot of recent
pen-l topics.
>
Replying to louis (who has given us some excellent articles
on environment/economic issues, thanks): Doug said:
>
>Two points. First, a sustained unemployment rate of below 5% does seem to
>be having the desired effect of boosting real wages, and most of that
>action has occurred during the last 12-18 months. So stopping at 1996
>misses a large part of the gain. Since the present expansion began in 1991,
>compensation (by this definition) is up 3.1% - cume, not annual growth
>rate.(Productivity, it should be noted, is up almost three times as much as
>wages.) ...[snip]...Since the dawn of the Clinton era, real direct
>hourly pay for all private sector workers is up 2.6%, with most of that
>gain in the last year or so.
>
So with inflation down, real pay rising, it looks good. but real unit labour
costs (real wage divided by labour productivity, which is also equivalent to
the wage share in national income) must have FALLEN by a substantital amount.
There has been a major swing towards the share in profits. This fits Jim's
also
excellent analysis. It seems to be that when factor shares shift in favour
of K, they invest more quickly to take advantage of it, productivity rises
(noting
that despite all the deregulationist, microeconomic reform rhetoric around the
OECD bloc, high productivity comes with high investment (both are macro
variables)),
and so does employment (although the quality of this is questionable).
Can you provide a RULC series doug of the top of your hat? I can go to the BLS
site and do it myself but you probably have this.
On hours and family income, doug said:
>
>I don't have the family of four numbers at my fingertips, but this is true
>of the average household. But, between 1993 & 1996, the average household's
>income is up 4.6% in real terms.
>Absolutely. As I said here the other day, this is a society that's sick
>with overwork.
>
can you also express the average household's income as a % of the total hours
worked and generate an index doug? the hypothesis from your description is
that it will be taking workers in general longer to generate a real $US.
kind regards
bill
#### ## William F. Mitchell
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