Many of you have no doubt seen George W. Bush’s “resume” highlighting all of his impressive failures that frequently gets emailed around. It gets updated periodically, as Bush’s failures grow more extensive and notable. Yesterday’s New York Times has a good one for the “W” resume - wage losses for the vast majority of Americans in 2004 - the first in a decade - in a time of “strong” corporate profits, and some job growth (about 1.8 million jobs needed just to keep up with the U.S. population annually - last year we got 2.2 million). From the Times:
“Beginning in the mid-1990’s, pay increases for most workers slowly but steadily outpaced the rate of inflation, improving the living standards for nearly all Americans. But an unexpected reversal last year in those gains has set off a vigorous debate among economists over whether the decline is just a temporary dip or portends a deeper shift that may cause the pay of average Americans to lag for years to come.
Even though the economy added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell for the year, after adjusting for inflation - the first such drop in nearly a decade.
….
The most commonly used yardstick of wages - the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ measure of nonsupervisory private-sector workers, covering 80 percent of the labor force - fell 0.5 percent last year, after inflation. Real wages for these workers are now lower, on average, than two years ago. A broader measure, the employment cost index, which includes supervisors, managers and most government workers, dropped 0.9 percent.”
These numbers are cold comfort to those unemployed, under-employed and under-compensated. But at least the numbers are starting to catch up with the reality of American workers. In normal political times there would be a hue and cry to get America working again. These are not normal times, but I take solace in the possibility that more Americans will start to see that George W. Bush isn’t working - and that Democrats work in office. America needs to hang in there for 2008.
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