The economy is booming, your salary is not: Blame the decline of unions

In the past 40 decades, regular working Americans have barely seen their salaries grow, while around them, the cost of housing and basic needs have skyrocketed, as has pay for business executives. What’s behind this decline? Economists and political scientists often point to the decline of labor unions in those same years as a major contributing factor to the current environment of soaring business profits and meager worker salaries. READ MORE

OFCCP Reins in Compensation Analysis by Rescinding Directive 307 and Issuing New Guidance

On August 24, 2018, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) rescinded Directive 3071 and its Obama-era procedures for reviewing contractor compensation systems and practices, and replaced it with a new directive under which OFCCP’s approach to compensation analysis is clarified and constrained.2 Although the new directive does not include a hoped-for safe harbor provision for contractors that undertake robust internal compensation audits and adjust compensation based on their findings, it does provide significant guidance to both OFCCP compliance officers and federal contractors about how compensation analysis will be approached and what contractors can expect. READ MORE

The Promotion That Comes Without the Pay Raise

More workers are facing the same dilemma: How do you respond when your boss offers you a nice new title, without a nice new raise to match?

Some 39% of employers often hand out promotions without a pay raise, up from 22% in 2011, according to a recent survey of 300 employers by the staffing firm OfficeTeam. Many employees are left wondering whether to swallow their resentment and accept the news, or push back for more money. READ MORE

Stagnant wages are a problem. Trump is the solution.

Since the 1990s, the share of national income going to working- and middle-class Americans has been dropping.  For most of the post-WWII period, wage-earners captured 64% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  At the beginning of the 21st century, however, things started to change for the worse.  In 2017, wages and salaries accounted for just 43% of the GDP.  This is the lowest level since 1929.  READ MORE
 

What’s Holding Back Wages in America?

America’s labor market is a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces don’t quite fit together.

Unemployment has plummeted to 3.9 percent, the lowest level since the early 2000s. Earnings calls are replete with chief executive officers bemoaning employee shortages. Small businesses are also feeling the pinch. In a July survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, 37 percent of owners reported at least one vacancy, and more than half said there were few or no qualified candidates for the job. READ MORE

Higher Minimum Wages Blamed for Closure of Iconic NYC Coffee Shop

Before she was the rising star of the progressive left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez worked shifts at the iconic Coffee Shop in Union Square, Manhattan.

That espresso-sized biographical nugget tells you a lot about Ocasio-Cortez. It grounds her as a real woman of the people, for one. She's held a low-paying service sector job. She had to commute from the working class, minority community of the Bronx to fill the coffee cups of well-off New Yorkers living in Manhattan. Union Square might not be the Upper East Side, but the contrast with Ocasio-Cortez' neighborhood is still pretty stark. READ MORE

Minimum Wage Facts And Fantasies

For years I've had fun at cocktail parties by asking this question: What percent of all the people who work in the U.S. are paid minimum wage or less? Of the hundreds of people I've asked, only one has come even close to the right answer. The great majority of the answers I've received (try it yourself!) range from 10% to as much as 50%. My conclusion: A huge number of Americans hold the fantasy belief that a significant percentage of those who work would benefit from raising the minimum wage. READ MORE

New Minimum Wage Plan Still Flawed

Politicians and activists have been trying to raise the federal minimum wage for years now. The Fight for $15 crowd is probably the most well-known, but other groups have been pushing for similar increases. One new plan from Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) and the think tank, Third Way, would tie an area’s federal minimum wage to its cost of living. This plan reduces the negative effects of a nationwide $15 minimum wage but it still has problems. READ MORE