Monday, January 29, 2018

Wages and Compensation

 How is the economy actually doing after a year with the dotard?

Pretty much the same as it was when he took over with most trends continuing.

There at of course some changes and the elimination of regulations and big tax gift to corporations is going to help their profitability and may lead to some hiring.

In general the unemployment numbers have improved over the last year, although they were already pretty low by historic standards.

Unemployment trends

What these numbers never measured were the people who were forced to take lower paying service jobs who used to have high paying manufacturing jobs.

The other area that hits workers is that while total compensation is up, the share of that compensation going to benefits is continuing to grow.

Increases in the cost of health insurance are not seen as pay raises by most.  Increasing costs with higher co-pays and deductibles.

Further there has been a trend in many companies and industries to switch from defined benefit pension plans to 401 K plans which makes the employee put aside additional take home pay.

These three changes, rotation into service jobs, increased health costs and increase pension contributions have made the growth in compensation less noticeable.

The current administration is not going to do anything to reverse these trends.

If labor gets scarce enough you may see companies reversing some of this, but they really prefer to simply use one time cash payments.

Its not a commitment.

Of course if you do work in the right place and the right industry, things are just fine.

No comments:

Post a Comment