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Friday, September 01, 2006

What do you expect from a guy who refers to "the haves and the have-mores" as his base?
Posted by Jill | 7:26 AM
Krugman:

Consider, for example, the results of a new poll of American workers by the Pew Research Center.

The center finds that workers perceive a long-term downward trend in their economic status. A majority say that it’s harder to earn a decent living than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and a plurality say that job benefits are worse too.

Are workers simply viewing the past through rose-colored glasses? The report seems to imply that they are: a section pointing out that workers surveyed in 1997 also said that it had gotten harder to make a decent living is titled, “As usual, people say things were better in the good old days.”

But as we’ve seen, real wages have been declining since the 1970’s, so it makes sense that workers have consistently said that it’s harder to make a living today than it was a generation ago.

On the other side, workers’ concern about worsening benefits is new. In 1997, a plurality of workers said that employment benefits were better than they used to be. That made sense: in 1997, the health care crisis, which had been a big political issue a few years earlier, seemed to have gone into remission. Medical costs were relatively stable, and in a tight labor market, employers were competing to offer improved benefits. Workers felt, rightly, that benefits were pretty good by historical standards.

But now the health care crisis is back, both because medical costs are rising rapidly and because we’re living in an increasingly Wal-Martized economy, in which even big, highly profitable employers offer minimal benefits. Employment-based insurance began a steep decline with the 2001 recession, and the decline has continued in spite of economic recovery.

The latest Census report on incomes, poverty and health insurance, released this week, shows that in 2005, four years into the economic expansion, the percentage of Americans with private insurance of any kind reached its lowest level since 1987. And Americans feel, again correctly, that benefits are worse than they used to be.

Why have workers done so badly in a rich nation that keeps getting richer? That’s a matter of dispute, although I believe there’s a large political component: what we see today is the result of a quarter-century of policies that have systematically reduced workers’ bargaining power.

The important question now, however, is whether we’re finally going to try to do something about the big disconnect. Wages may be difficult to raise, but we won’t know until we try. And as for declining benefits — well, every other advanced country manages to provide everyone with health insurance, while spending less on health care than we do.


Here's what's going on in the "highly paid workers" sector:

Executives from Intel, the largest chip maker, are expected to reveal on Tuesday the results of a sweeping evaluation of the company’s internal operations that could include layoffs of thousands of employees.

The moves would be the culmination of what Paul S. Otellini, Intel’s chief executive, promised in April would be a broad review of operations to reduce costs and increase efficiency, after Intel’s announcement of disappointing financial results.

Mr. Otellini told Intel employees in an e-mail message sent Thursday that he would announce the results of the study to workers via a company Webcast on Tuesday, according to an Intel employee who requested anonymity.


Otellini's basic compensation in 2004, BEFORE succeeding Craig Barrett as CEO, was $9,363,600 -- exclusive of stock options. The total value of his stock options was $18,793,400.

I'm sure the fact that Otellini pulls in a cool $9 million a year WITHOUT stock options will comfort the thousands of tech workers who will now find themselves looking for work in an all-but-dead IT market in this country.

The jobs numbers are still insufficient to even accommodate the on average 150,000 new entrants into the job market every month:

U.S. private employers added 107,000 jobs in August, a survey by a private employment service said on Wednesday.

ADP Employer Services employment report was jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers LLC. In July, U.S. private employers added 99,000 jobs by comparison.

Automatic Data Processing, based in Roseland, New Jersey, is the parent of ADP Employer Services and is a large payroll services company. Macroeconomic Advisers LLC is based in St. Louis, Missouri.

The ADP National Employment Report is released each month, two days prior to the government's own non-farm payrolls survey.

According to the latest Reuters poll of economists, the U.S. Labor Department on Friday is expected to show that 120,000 non-farm payroll jobs were created in August, up from 113,000 in July.


But some people ARE doing well, oil and defense company CEOs in particular:

Top U.S. executives in the oil and defense industry have been able to translate war and rising oil prices into bigger paychecks, according to a study released on Wednesday.

Since the war on terror began, CEOs of the top 34 defense contractors have seen pay levels that are double the amounts they received during the four years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, according to the report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

Rising oil prices have translated into a 50 percent increase in pay for chief executive officers at the nation's top 15 oil companies since 2004.

Last year, defense industry CEOs walked off with 44 times more pay than military generals with 20 years experience and 308 times more than Army privates, the study showed.

The report surveyed all publicly held U.S. corporations among the top 100 defense contractors that had at least 10 percent of revenues in defense. These 34 CEOs combined have pocketed almost a billion dollars since 9/11.


Mission accomplished!
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