State of the Union
posted by elivo at 5:29 PM
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Talk to the Hand
lazurdadeldiego@gmail.comPrevious Posts
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4 Comments:
elivo, form today's NYT:
Perhaps the biggest surprise in today’s report was a surge in wage-and-salary income during the first half of this year. Between the fourth quarter of last year and the second quarter of 2006, it grew at an annual rate of about 7 percent...
As a result, wages and salaries no longer make up their smallest share of the gross domestic product since World War II. They accounted for 46.1 percent of economic output in the second quarter, down from a high of 53.6 percent in 1970 but up from 45.4 percent last year.
Total compensation — including employee health benefits, which have risen in value in recent years — equaled 57.1 percent of the economy, down from 59.8 percent in 1970. Still, compensation makes up a larger share of the economy than it did throughout the 1950’s and early 60’s, as well as during parts of the mid-1990’s and the last couple of years.
--sorry.
also from todays NYT:
Even the best number from yesterday’s Census Bureau report for 2005 is bad news for most Americans. It shows that median income rose 1.1 percent last year, to $46,326, the first increase since it peaked in 1999. But the entire increase is attributable to the 23 million households headed by someone over age 65. So the gain is likely from investment income and Social Security, not wages and salaries.
For the other 91 million households, the median dropped, by half a percent, or $275. Incomes for the under-65 crowd were hurt by a decline in wages and salaries among full-time working men for the second year in a row, and among full-time working women for the third straight year. In all, median income for the under-65 group was $2,000 lower in 2005 than in 2001, when the last recession bottomed out.
Despite the Bush-era expansion, the number of Americans living in poverty in 2005 — 37 million — was the same as in 2004. This is the first time the number has not risen since 2000. But the share of the population now in poverty — 12.6 percent — is still higher than at the trough of the last recession, when it was 11.7 percent. And among the poor, 43 percent were living below half the poverty line in 2005 — $7,800 for a family of three. That’s the highest percentage of people in “deep poverty” since the government started keeping track of those numbers in 1975.
As for the uninsured, their ranks grew in 2005 by 1.3 million people, to a record 46.6 million, or 15.9 percent. That’s also worse than the recession year 2001, reflecting the rising costs of health coverage and a dearth of initiatives to help families and companies cope with the burden. For the first time since 1998, the percentage of uninsured children increased in 2005.
For more, from two days ago, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1156983252-VI5j2BTjpBY0s0QWKFIyAQ
last part of the link got cut off -
28wages.html
and by the way, you forgot to cite this part of your article:
Joshua Shapiro, the chief United States economist at MFR, said that much of the income increase likely went to people who work on Wall Street or for hedge funds. The biggest spike was in the first quarter, when financial companies typically pay bonuses, and other data — including Labor Department numbers on wage growth and private-sector surveys on consumer confidence — suggest that most families are not receiving pay increases that outpace inflation.
apology accepted.
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