CNNMoney: Workers Lose Traction Over Past Ten Years

[DeepModem Mom]

Workers lose traction over past 10 years
Despite strong productivity growth, wages don't keep pace and fewer workers receive health and pension coverage.
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer
September 2 2006

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Working for The Man may never have been an overpaid joy, but it has offered a decent way to make a living.

Yet it's become less decent, especially considering how strong productivity growth has been, according to findings from the 2006 edition of The State of Working America from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal nonprofit research group.

Between 1995 and 2005, productivity -- a measure of the quantity and quality of what workers produce per hour -- grew 33.4 percent. But hourly wages rose only 11 percent, with almost all of that increase coming during the late 1990s, according to EPI.

Looking back even farther, the disparity is greater. Since 1979, productivity rose 67 percent, while wages rose only 8.9 percent.

"The economic expansion continues to bypass most working families," said EPI economist Jared Bernstein, a coauthor of the report....

http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/01/news/economy/state_working/index.htm?cnn=yes

[Maccagirl]

1. No shit?

Water is wet, I hear.

[TomClash]

2. Duh

I'm surprised they didn't classify this as "Breaking News!"

[bronxiteforever]

3. A major DemocratIC party platform is here

GOP is in love with its "base" and doesn't give a hoot about the middle, working and poor classes.
Dismantle economic opportunities and the remains of the new deal and we get the destruction of our republic. This indeed is the real battle of ideology, not the war on terra. The question is will the US be a progressive country or one fit for robber barons and gilded ages. In Bushworld there is no health care, no social security and no requirements for pension. The GOP only really cares about the rich and it throws the social bs about abortion, stem cell, flag burning, gay marriage out there to "split the classes".

[MrModerate]

4. And lest you think this has all gone to the top 10% of earners . . .

It hasn't. I'm in that cohort and my compensation has lost substantial ground vis-a-vis the top 5%, and compared to the top 1% my boss' boss' boss, f'rintance gets, to an obscene degree -- and said boss doesn't even get the stock options (or equal, as my company is purely private) his boss gets.

It's not just that the rich are getting richer, it's that the amount of money shifted to the ultrarich now so outbalances the rest of us that their influence renders ours mostly irrelevant.

And let me tell you -- their vision of right and wrong is no more elevated than yours. They're concerned about them and theirs first, foremost, and always.