The Status Quo is shameless when it comes to hyping the recovery by whatever metric is most positive. Recently, that has been the stock market, but if GDP rises significantly (and recall GDP increases if the government borrows and blows money), then that number is duly trotted out by politicos and Mainstream Media toadies. If we scrape away this ceaseless perception management, we find that legitimate broadbased prosperity is always based on rising employment and increased purchasing power of wages. The phantom wealth that is conjured by asset bubbles vanishes when the bubbles inevitably pop, leaving all those who borrowed against their ephemeral bubble wealth hapless debt-serfs. If prosperity ultimately depends on employment and earned income (wages), how are we doing as a nation? Unfortunately, the answer is "terrible." As a percentage of the population, full-time employment is down. Only 36% of the population has a full-time job.
Total civilian employment is also down:
If we adjust GDP for the growth of M2 money supply and population, we find the broadest measure of the U.S. economy is tanking.
As for wages, I have often reprinted this chart by Doug Short: adjusted for official inflation, real wages are down by 7% - 8%.
(Doug recently reported on net worth, which has nominally matched previous levels but adjusted for official inflation is down 12% from its peak: Household Net Worth: The "Real" Story.)
Adjusted for inflation, the median income for the lower 90% of wage earners (138 million people) has been flat since 1970--forty years. Only the top 10% (14 million people) actually gained income, and only the top 5% gained significantly (+90%).
Clearly, current policies are not very employment-positive.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar13/jobs3-13.html
No comments:
Post a Comment