(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. After-Inflation Wages Could Still Use More Inflation

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Barack Obama, election 2020, inflation-adjusted wages, manufacturing, private sector, real wages, recovery, Trump, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

This morning’s real wages figures from the Labor Department (for December) contained an unusually diverse grab bag of results, and with a presidential election year now officially underway, perhaps the most newsworthy are those that could well affect the race for the White House – and which on balance seem unfavorable to President Trump.

In addition, though, some other results undermine a major belief about how after-inflation paychecks have fared during the current (record length) economic recovery versus its two immediate predecessors.

Not that the news was all bad for the President and his supporters (and anyone else rooting for a stronger American economy). Yes, overall, inflation-adjusted wages in the private sector dipped sequentially for the second time in three months – by 0.09 percent. (The Labor Department doesn’t track real public sector wages because their trends say more about politicians’ decisions than about economic fundamentals).

But if these preliminary figures hold tightly enough, the 2019 year-on-year improvement of 0.64 percent will be higher than 2018’s 0.56 percent increase.

At the same time, wage growth decelerated throughout 2019 – from 0.37 percent between January and June to 0.27 percent between June and December.

Real manufacturing wages fared better, continuing a year-long trend. Month-to-month in December they climbed by 0.18 percent, and their year-on-year increase and improvement were stronger than that of the private sector, too. The latest annual rise was 0.74 percent – up from the previous year’s flatline. And throughout 2019, they increased at the same 0.37 percent rates during both halves of the year.

But the results were less encouraging for non-supervisory workers in both the private sector overall and in manufacturing. By certain measures, paychecks for the lowest paid U.S. workers have been improving faster than those for the workforce overall. And using the Labor Department’s methodology of distinguishing supervisory from non-supervisory workers provides some support for that finding.

For example, on an annual basis, in 2019 and 2018, inflation-adjusted wages increased faster for both non-supervisory manufacturing and blue-collar workers than those wages for all workers, as shown here:

                                     Total private     N/S private     Total mfg      N/S mfg

Year-on-year, 2019:         +0.64%           +0.75%          +0.74%        +0.45%

Year-on-year, 2018:        +0.56%           +1.63%                0%          +1.14%

Yet the table also shows 2018-19 deceleration for both groups.

Moreover, on month in December, real wages for these blue-collar workers performed worse in absolute terms than for all private sector and manufacturing workers – actually falling by 0.21 percent for the former (the biggest decline since October, 2018’s 0.22 percent drop) and increasing by just 0.11 percent for the latter.

And deceleration continued through the year. Between the first and second halves of 2019, constant dollar wages increases for the private sector fell from 0.53 percent to 0.21 percent, and from 0.23 percent to 0.22 percent for manufacturing.

The impact of Boeing’s safety-related woes on aircraft manufacturing per se and on the company’s huge domestic supply chain could explain some of these disappointing figures for industry. But so could the uncertainties created either by Mr. Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies, or by their ragged implementation, or both. Further, as the numbers indicate, real wage weakness isn’t simply a manufacturing problem.

Perhaps most important for Mr. Trump, real wages’ performance during the first 34 months of his term in office (starting with February, 2017, his first full month), have lagged their increases during the most comparable period in Barack Obama’s presidency – his last 34 months in office (ending in January, 2017). Here are the results:

                                       Total private      N/S private      Total mfg        N/S mfg

1^st 34 Trump months:         +2.53%           +2.72%           +0.65%          +2.77%

last 34 Obama months:      +3.50%           +3.97%          +3.05%           +2.97%

Finally, the new real wages data show that when it comes to this gauge, the current economic recovery stacks up unexpectedly well with the two previous expansions where a reasonable amount of statistics exist – for non-supervisory workers. The comparison is especially striking between the current expansion and the 1990s expansion – which is widely viewed as an excellent one for both the economy and America’s employees.

                                                               Private    N/S private    mfg     N/S mfg

1990s expansion (2Q 91-1Q 01):             n/a           +6.37%       n/a      +2.18%

bubble expansion (4Q 01-4Q 07):           n/a            +0.35%       n/a      -2.77%

current expansion (2Q 09 – present):  +6.30%        +6.79%   +1.59%   +3.01%

Unfortunately for President Trump and Trump-ers, though, this longer-term picture isn’t likely to impress voters as much as more recent developments. And when it comes to workers’ after-inflation wages, he clearly has more work to do.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy): The Real Private Sector’s Job Creation is Lagging Again

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Employment, healthcare services, Jobs, private sector, real private sector, subsidized private sector, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Although President Trump may not like America’s current healthcare system much, lately it’s been keeping his own economic record in solid shape – not to mention and bolstering his reelection chances. The evidence? Robust employment creation in the nation’s enormous healthcare services sector this year has been almost singlehandedly responsible for keeping job growth in the respectable range, and for strengthening the case that he’s steered the economy ably.

Unfortunately, the big 2019 relative rebound in payrolls in healthcare services and the rest of what I’ve long called the subsidized private sector is less good news for the economy itself. For the huge scale of these positions says much more about the government largesse on which their existence depends than about the state of the nation’s economic fundamentals – the market forces that drive employment in what can be called the economy’s real private sector, and that are supposed to be the keys to long-term national prosperity.

In fact, the figures for 2019 – which now cover its first eleven months – show that whereas the subsidized private sector’s profile in the U.S. labor market had been receding during the first two years of the Trump administration, this year it returned to levels not seen since the early days of the current (record-length) economic recovery. And consequently, the real private sector’s performance has revealed new weakness.

Specifically, from January-through-November 2011 (when the economy settled into normal expansion mode after the typically strong short-term bounceback from an unusually deep recession) through the comparable 2016 period, the subsidized private sector’s share of total gains in “nonfarm employment” (the U.S. Labor Department’s definition of the American jobs universe) grew from 19.35 percent to 25.87 percent. And its share of employment increases in the total, conventionally defined private sector itself, increased from 16.71 percent in 2011 to 36.88 percent in 2016.

By Mr. Trump’s second year in office, healthcare services and other subsidized private sector employment had sunk to 18.96 percent of total nonfarm job creation and 24.55 percent of total private sector job creation.

But what a difference a year has made! For the first eleven months of 2019, fully 30.96 percent of all U.S. jobs created have come in the subsidized private sector, and these industries accounted for more than half (50.75 percent) of private sector job creation. The former figure was the economy’s highest since 2010 (when it hit 32.78 percent), and the latter’s the highest since 2016 (when it hit 58.43 percent).

The Trump record isn’t entirely discouraging if you’re a fan of real private sector job creation – and you should be if you believe (as you should) that the predominance of market forces represents the economy’s best hope for sustainable prosperity. For the pace of public sector hiring has definitely waned over the last three years – and not only in relative terms. During the final three January-through-November periods of the Obama administration, government was adding an annual average of 140,000 jobs. During the first three such periods under Mr. Trump, the annual average is down to 110,000 (though it’s been on the upswing since 2017).

Yet if levels of government spending are the driving forces in both cases, is the relationship between the public sector and the subsidized private sector a distinction without a difference?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trump’s Real Wage Record Still Needs More Work

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Barack Obama, inflation adjusted wages, Labor Department, manufacturing, private sector, Trump, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The new after-inflation wage figures released this morning by the Labor Department (that bring the story, preliminarily, through November) show that workers’ price-adjusted take home pay remains a feature of President Trump’s economic record that still needs work.

This conclusion comes through loud and clear from the table below. It shows the real hourly wages changes over various periods of time for all private sector workers (Labor doesn’t track public sector wages, since they’re largely set by politicians’ decisions, and therefore say little about the underlying state of the economy), for private sector “production and nonsupervisory” workers (let’s call them “blue-collar” for short) and for all manufacturing and blue-collar manufacturing workers.

                                                                           All workers      Blue-collar workers

November m/m private:                                      0 percent           +0.11 percent

November m/m manufacturing:                      +0.09 percent           0 percent

November y/y private:                                   +1.11 percent         +1.72 percent

November y/y manufacturing:                       +1.02 percent        +1.81 percent

private 1^st 33 Trump months:                         +2.62 percent        +3.16 percent

manufacturing 1^st 33 Trump months:             +0.46 percent        +2.54 percent

private last 33 Obama months:                      +3.69 percent        +4.07 percent

manufacturing last 33 Obama months:          +3.35 percent       +3.46 percent

private since current recovery onset:             +6.40 percent       +7.24 percent

manufacturing since recovery onset:             +1.40 percent       +2.77 percent

The short-term trends look pretty good. In particular, the difference between the latest annual increase in constant dollar private sector wages (1.11 percent) and the increase during the first 33 months of the Trump administration (2.62 percent) makes clear that the last year has a greater average monthly rate of improvement (0.93 percent) than the entire period (0.79 percent). Therefore, there’s been a modest acceleration in real wage increases. (I consider February, 2017 the current administration’s start month, since President Trump was inaugurated on January 20.)

The picture has been even brighter for blue-collar workers, with the average monthly rates of increase standing at 1.56 percent over the last year and (0.96 percent) for Mr. Trump’s entire term in office.

Price-adjusted manufacturing wages have grown slower so far during this Trump term than private sector wages, but acceleration is evident here, too. In fact, it’s been even faster. For all manufacturing workers, after-inflation wages have risen over the past year by an average of 0.85 percent per month. Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, though, this rate has been only 0.14 percent.

And although also at lower absolute levels of increase, the wage increase pickup has been greater for manufacturing’s blue-collar workers as well – an average monthly gain of 1.51 percent over the last year versus one of only 0.77 percent for the President’s entire tenure.

So what’s the problem? It’s that this wage performance for all categories of workers pales before that from the best comparable Obama administration period – its final 33 months. And the biggest gap has been in manufacturing, for both the total and blue-collar workforces.

It’s entirely possible, as I’ve noted, that the worse record during the Trump years could be due to employers of all kinds, including manufacturing, being forced during a time of super-low joblessness to start hiring workers they’d have never considered before – because they’d likely be so unproductive, at least at first. It’s also entirely possible that this development will yield big long-term benefits for the entire economy. And if it’s true, this thesis would be terrific news for those new workers at first.

But such fine points are even more likely to be ignored or downplayed during an election year than they are normally. Which means that without major progress in the months ahead, Mr. Trump had better hope that his Democratic rivals ignore the details of the wage figures as thoroughly as the media typically do.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A New Anti-Trade War Argument Bites the Dust

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BLS, blue-collar workers, Bruce Yandle, Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumers, George Mason University, inflation-adjusted wages, Mercatus Center, private sector, real wages, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, wages, Washington Examiner, work week, workers, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Bruce Yandle of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center has just added a novel claim to the list of catastrophes allegedly triggered by President Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies. In an October 28 Washington (D.C.) Examiner post, He seems to understand that amid rock-bottom rates of U.S. joblessness, it’s getting ever tougher to contend that the trade wars are killing American employment (though the rate of net job gains has certainly slowed in most sectors since the advent of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in March, 2018).

So Yandle, a former university business school dean, has come up with another reason for the nation’s workers and aspiring workers to hate the curbs on trade: They’re making Americans work too darned hard for the stuff they like to buy. It’s an intriguing idea with just one fatal flaw: It’s not supported by a shred of evidence. P.S.: It takes about 10 minutes of internet surfing and arithmetic-ing to demolish.

Here’s Yandle’s case:

“[T]he occurrence of high employment in the face of a slowing economy can be the result of putting tariff-made rocks in our own harbors to keep out lower-cost foreign goods. When cheaper goods can no longer be imported, we have to work longer and harder to maintain the same level of consumption.

“Low unemployment is something to celebrate but let’s at least note that there are some people who might (quite reasonably) prefer to work a little less with more leisure time and cheaper cars, clothes, and tools, which are some of the goods that have been hit with tariffs.”

I’m unaware of any instances of workers complaining that, “I’d be able to knock off earlier and clean out Walmart if only for those stupid tariffs,” but what I suppose really doesn’t matter. Nor should what anyone supposes matter – because the federal government keeps statistics both on Americans’ hours on the job and their pay.

The results of my research are below. They show hours worked for various major categories of private sector employees, and the change in their hourly inflation-adjusted wages, over two relevant time periods. The first goes from the first full month of the Trump administration (February, 2017) through the latest data month (this September – tomorrow the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release the October numbers), and from the first full month of the administration’s first important tariffs (April, 2018, for the steel and aluminum levies) through September. (Government employees’ wages aren’t monitored by BLS because their pay is set largely via politicians’ decisions, and therefore says little about the economy’s fundamental strengths or weaknesses.)

Total private weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 34.3 to 34.4

Total private weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 34.5 to 34.4

Total blue-collar weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 33.6 to 33.6

Total blue-collar weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 33.8 to 33.6

Total manufacturing weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 40.7 to 40.5

Total manufacturing weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 41.0 to 40.5

Total manufacturing blue-collar weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 41.9 to 41.5

Total manufacturing blue-collar weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 42.4 to 41.5

Total private real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +2.53 percent

Total private real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +.1.86 percent

Total blue-collar real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +3.05 percent

Total blue-collar real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +2.49 percent

Total manufacturing real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +0.46 percent

Total manufacturing real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +0.83 percent

Total manufacturing blue-collar real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +2.77 percent

Total manufacturing blue-collar real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +1.25 percent

For every category except two, over both time periods, workers’ weekly hours went down, and their real wages went up. That is, their leisure time and the buying power of their pay both have risen. They’ve been working less and been able to purchase more.

The first exception is overall private sector workers. Since Mr. Trump’s administration began, their work week has edged up – a tenth of an hour. Even so, their pay rose faster. So they don’t have much cause to complain about working too hard and enjoying the fruits of their labor less.

The second exception entails the overall blue-collar workforce (called “production and nonsupervisory employees” in BLS-ese). Its work week has stayed the same since the Trump inauguration. At the same time, however, this group experienced the fastest wage increase during this period. And its pay in constant dollars went up even faster after the metals tariffs were imposed – as its workweek dipped.

Moreover, this points to another problem with Yandle’s case:  All four categories of workers saw their workweek fall faster after the tariffs’ imposition than before. And in three of the four (except for manufacturing blue-collar workers) wages rose faster after the tariffs went on as well.

And in case you’re wondering, to create some context, whether American workers recently have been significantly better off in the absence of tariffs and trade wars, the answer is, “Not consistently during the current economic recovery.”

No one’s saying that these results show that the United States is a workers’ paradise, or is becoming one because of the Trump tariffs. But if anyone has a right to be grumpy about the above trends, it’s trade mavens like Yandle, who are pushing fact-free arguments to take the levies down.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Trade Wars’ Bite on Manufacturing Jobs Looks Deeper

Tags

2020 elections, aluminum, China, Jobs, Labor Department, manufacturing, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, private sector, steel, tariffs, Trade, trade war, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Today’s U.S. jobs report (for September) contained much better news for President Trump and his supporters in terms of the economy’s overall performance than it did in terms of his trade policies. American employment on net rose by a decent 136,000 sequentially last month, and the revisions (which boosted the July and August numbers by a total of 45,000) were especially encouraging.

But payrolls in domestic manufacturing – a sector heavily exposed to trade – shrank month-to-month by 2,000. That decline was the first such dip since March’s 3,000. And despite the big positive revisions in overall employment, manufacturing’s left its modest recent hiring record virtually unchanged.

Worse for the President, manufacturing’s metals-using industries in September continued their worrisome recent transition from employment out-performers for the first half year or so after the first duties on steel and aluminum were levied to employment laggards.

Moreover, although manufacturing employment does face two obstacles having nothing to do with the Mr. Trump’s trade wars – Boeing’s safety woes and the strike that began last month against General Motors – damage from the former isn’t yet evident in the jobs data, and the latter probably began too recently to be showing up in the numbers yet.

The impact of the much broader China tariffs remained as elusive as ever, largely because of the on-again, off-again nature of the President’s policies, along with changes and threatened changes in tariff rates on so many goods. But even if Mr. Trump was a model of consistency on this score, the China levies’ effects would be fiendishly difficult to gauge because manufacturing inputs from China are used so broadly but so unevenly by domestic manufacturers.

By contrast, the trends for the metals-using industries look clear enough. This time, I’ll present not only their employment changes since April, 2018 (the first full month in which the metals levies were in effect) and September, but the same employment changes for an earlier post-tariff period. First, the latest numbers:

                                                   Old thru Aug     New thru Aug      Thru Sept

entire private sector:                  +2.30 percent    +2.31 percent    +2.40 percent

overall manufacturing:              +1.73 percent    +1.73 percent    +1.71 percent

durable goods:                           +2.10 percent    +2.10 percent    +2.05 percent

fabricated metals products:        +1.58 percent   +1.56 percent    +1.36 percent

non-electrical machinery:          +2.19 percent    +2.20 percent   +1.95 percent

automotive vehicles & parts:        0 percent         -0.23 percent    -0.69 percent

household appliances*:               not available     -6.31 percent    not available

aerospace products & parts*:      not available    +8.38 percent    not available

*data are one month behind

The loss of the metals-using sectors’ employment momentum in relative and absolute terms can be easily seen. But the more important comparison is between the above figures and those below, which present these trends for the first 10 months of the metals tariffs.

                                                   Old thru Dec    New thru Dec      Thru Jan

entire private sector:                 +1.37 percent   +1.36 percent   +1.60 percent

overall manufacturing:             +1.45 percent   +1.39 percent   +1.49 percent

durable goods:                          +1.67 percent   +1.72 percent   +1.97 percent

fabricated metals products:      +1.75 percent    +1.57 percent   +1.78 percent

non-electrical machinery:        +2.20 percent    +2.33 percent   +2.57 percent

automotive vehicles & parts:  +0.77 percent     +1.07 percent   +1.15 percent

household appliances*:            not available      -2.21 percent     not available

aerospace products & parts*:   not available     +5.51 percent    not available

*data are one month behind

This table shows that except for the household appliances sector (which has faced a separate, product-specific set of tariffs on large household laundry equipment since February, 2018), and automotive, the metals-using sectors were creating new employment at a considerably faster pace than both the overall private economy and overall manufacturing. And automotive was closing the gap.

Aside from trade, the White House, and everyone seeking the best for the U.S. economy, should also be troubled by the drop in September in the year-on-year manufacturing jobs increase to 117,000. That’s the worst such performance since August, 2017’s 112,000 and less than half the rate of the previous September annual improvement (266,000).

Better news for Trump-ers? Manufacturing job creation during the first 31 months of the Trump presidency is still much better (464,000) than during the last 31 months of former President Barack Obama’s administration (198,000).

Matters look better for the President (and manufacturing workers) on the wages front. Although industry’s pre-inflation hourly pay only inched up on month by 0.07 percent, that result beat the 0.04 percent dip for the overall private sector. (The Labor Department, which tracks the employment and wages figures, doesn’t monitor public sector wages since they’re set largely by politicians’ decisions, not largely by market forces. Therefore, they say almost nothing about the state of the labor market or the economic in general.)

Moreover, this relatively good manufacturing’s wage performance continued a slow relative catch up trend that began this year. Since January, current-dollar private sector pay is up 1.92 percent, versus 2.20 percent for manufacturing workers.

All the same, since the current economic recovery began, in mid-2009, private sector wages have risen by 26.87 percent. Manufacturing’s increase? Only 21.03 percent. And these manufacturing wages rose faster during the last 31 months of the Obama presidency (6.04 percent) than during the first 31 months of the Trump administration (5.53 percent). 

The safest economic conclusion seems to be that manufacturing hiring is hardly in the dumps – as suggested by the latest (also September) soft data from the Institute for Supply Management.  Nor does this looks like a “Tariff-mageddon” is upon us. But manufacturing job creation is also well off 2018’s robust pace, and the more so in major trade-affected industries . And its underlying situation will as more difficult to describe the Boeing and General Motors effects become visible (assuming the auto strike isn’t settled quickly).

But as cautious as that analysis is, the political implications as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up are even murkier. For barring a dramatic change in the manufacturing picture, they’ll depend on voters deciding whether the Trump manufacturing, trade, and overall economic record are good enough.   

Im-Politic: Has Trump’s Record on Real Wages Been Good Enough Politically?

Tags

Barack Obama, China, Im-Politic, inflation-adjusted wages, Labor Department, manufacturing, private sector, real wages, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, wages

Given the on-again-off-again nature of President Trump’s tariff policies (which against China went partly off again yesterday in the form of an announced short delay in the imposition of $250 billion worth of levies originally set for October 1), I figured there was no sense in performing my now-standard analysis of this morning’s new monthly U.S. consumer price inflation figures (for August).

Instead, I’ll focus on today’s inflation-adjusted wage data – which is always released by the Labor Department in tandem with the consumer inflation report –  and here there’s definitely some good news for President Trump, his supporters, and for manufacturing workers. One notable qualification: The shorter the memories of Trump working class voters, the better for his political future.

The table below makes clear what I mean. It shows the price-adjusted wage changes for the last three January-thru-August periods for private sector workers overall, for “blue-collar” private sector workers (that is, those not in management or supervisory positions), for manufacturing workers overall, and for blue-collar workers in general and their manufacturing counterparts. (To remind:  The Labor Department doesn’t track wages for public sector employees, since their pay stems mainly from politicians’ decisions, not economic fundamentals.) 

January thru Aug. real wages                  2019                2018                 2017

private sector:                                 +0.55 percent   +0.75 percent    +0.94 percent

private sector blue-collar:               +1.27 percent   +0.76 percent   +0.76 percent

manufacturing:                               +0.65 percent     -0.19 percent   +0.46 percent

manufacturing blue-collar:            +0.23 percent         0 percent      +1.15 percent

As you can see, manufacturing workers in particular have seen January-through-August constant-dollar wage gains in 2019 that were much better than in the comparable last year – but largely because the 2018 results were terrible. Moreover, for blue-collar manufacturing workers, the 2019 improvement was still much weaker than the 2017 increase. Private sector blue-collar after-inflation hourly wages accelerated year-on-year in 2019 as well, but the 2018 gain was at least identical to 2017’s.

Short blue-collar worker memories will also help Trumpworld if the Obama administration’s real wage record is forgotten. For Mr. Trump’s record trails that of his predecessor for all of these major worker categories (although the advance in inflation-adjusted manufacturing blue-collar wages under both Presidents during comparable periods of their terms in office is pretty similar).

                                                   Last 30 Obama months       First 30 Trump months

private sector:                                  +3.39 percent                      +2.62 percent

private sector blue-collar:               +3.97 percent                      +2.72 percent

manufacturing:                                +3.25 percent                     +0.37 percent

manufacturing blue-collar:              +3.22 percent                     +3.11 percent

Let’s end on a fairly positive note for Mr. Trump and his backers: The table below shows that overall, price-adjusted wages in manufacturing fared better after his tariffs’ advent in March, 2018 (for the most part) than during the pre-tariff phrase of his presidency. Because the two time periods have been of different lengths, I’m presenting the results in terms of average monthly changes in absolute dollars and cents terms.

                                                         Pre-tariffs                            Post-tariffs

Manufacturing:                               -0.31 cents                           +0.50 cents

Blue-collar manufacturing:           +0.85 cents                            +0.75 cents

Again, what these statistics mean for the future of American workers is anyone’s guess, especially in trade-heavy manufacturing, since trade policy decisions seem so ragged. And politically, the key question remains: Have times been good enough for working class and other voters during the Trump era to offset other concerns about his leadership sufficiently to bring him a second term?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The New Jobs Report’s Wage Details are Mixed, Too – Economically and Politically

Tags

inflation-adjusted wages, Jobs, manufacturing, Obama, private sector, real wages, Trump, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The latest U.S. government report on the nation’s employment picture (for August) produced unusually mixed jobs results. (See, e.g., this report.) Maybe that’s why analysts seem to have missed one of its more encouraging takeaways: Hourly wages in the manufacturing sector, which have remained weak throughout the current economic expansion and into the Trump era, have picked up notably so far this year.

Yet the new data also make clear that, when it comes to the gap between U.S. blue-collar workers’ in the private sector overall and those of their better paid white-collar counterparts, the former have lost some ground under the Trump administration, even though their hourly wages are up in absolute terms.

So for a President who’s going to run for reelection largely as a populist champion of forgotten Americans, the August results were unusually mixed as well. 

That manufacturing-specific pickup has taken place in pre-inflation wages, and we won’t get the latest constant dollar figures until this coming Thursday. But the progress before adjusting for price changes (and don’t forget – inflation has been awfully low lately) has been so notable that, for now, manufacturing wages’ performance is no longer worsening in comparison with the trends in the overall private sector. Indeed, the gap has narrowed a smidge.

Chiefly, from this January through August, current dollar manufacturing wages are up 2.09 percent. That’s the best such increase since 2008 (2.44 percent) – when the economy was still mired in recession, and employers’ tendency to jettison less experienced and thus more poorly paid workers produced a statistical wage increase for the remaining manufacturing workforce.

Moreover, this improvement was slightly faster than the two percent rise achieved by the private sector overall – also the best such performance since 2008 (2.36 percent). (This Labor Department wage series only goes back to 2006.)

The story is similar for blue-collar workers in both manufacturing and the private sector overall. (Data for these wages in the overall private sector goes back all the way to 1964 and for manufacturing to 1939.) For blue-collar manufacturing workers (called “production and nonsupervisory employees” by the Labor Department), January-through-August pre-inflation hourly pay is up 1.74 percent. That’s of course less than for the manufacturing workforce as a whole, but it’s the best such number since 2016 (1.98 percent) and, perhaps more important, the second best since 2006.

For the overall private sector, current-dollar blue-collar wages have advanced by 2.08 percent between January and August of this year. That’s their best such performance since 2008’s 2.48 percent.

As a result, from the beginning of the current economic recovery (mid-2009) this August, overall pre-inflation private sector wages had risen 1.2906 times faster than comparable hourly pay in manufacturing. That’s ever-so-slightly slower (but still slower) than the ratio through last August (1.294 times faster).

Manufacturing’s relative improvement was greater for blue-collar workers. From the mid-2009 beginning of the current economic recovery through this August, private sector nonsupervisory etc current dollar hourly wages have risen 1.2131 times faster than blue-collar manufacturing wages. That’s a smaller gap than the 1.228:1 ratio from the recovery onset through last August.

Nonetheless, the data show that, after narrowing slightly under former President Obama, the pre-inflation hourly wage difference between blue-collar and white-collar workers overall has been growing slightly again under President Trump.

When the recovery began, in mid-2009, private sector production and non-supervisory workers’ hourly wages were 83.83 percent of the wages earned private sector workers overall. By January, 2017 – the last Obama month in office, this figure had grown to 83.99 percent. As of this August, however, it’s back down to 83.92 percent.

Interestingly, the Trump record looks better when only the manufacturing trends are examined. In mid-2009, blue-collar manufacturing wages stood at 78.93 percent of manufacturing wages overall before inflation. By January, 2017, the share had dipped to 78.25 percent. The latest statistics show that it’s grown to 79.88 percent.

None of these changes is anywhere close to dramatic – a timely reminder, as a presidential campaign year rapidly approaches, that the U.S. economy really is akin to a supertanker, and barring sudden catastrophes or windfalls, typically takes a frustratingly long time to turn significantly.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. Job Quality Takes a Turn for the Worse

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Employment, healthcare services, Jobs, private sector, public sector, recovery, subsidized private sector, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Here’s how bad America’s employment performance has been so far this year. Not only has job creation lagged quantitatively. But by one key measure that RealityChek has followed for years, job quality worsened, too. Specifically, after falling significantly during the first two years of the Trump administration as a share of total hiring, job creation in what I call the subsidized private sector of the economy is up sharply.

To review, the subsidized private sector – dominated by healthcare services – consists of those industries that are typically classified (including by federal government statisticians) as private sector industries, but whose levels of activity (including job creation) are determined largely by politicians’ decisions about levels of government support, not market forces.

This observation doesn’t imply any conclusion that subsidized private sector jobs are merit-less. But it does reflect the understandable and commonly held belief that the genuine private sector is the economy’s main source of productivity growth and innovation, and that therefore it should dominate job creation as well.

The main evidence comes in the form of the figures on the subsidized private sector’s share of total hiring in America, of hiring in the private sector as conventionally defined (which includes the subsidized numbers), and of hiring in the “real private sector” (the total resulting from subtracting the subsidized private sector from the conventionally defined private sector figures). And since we only have data for the first six months of this year (including those for June, which are still preliminary), the time frames compared here will consist of the first six months of each year since the June, 2009 beginning of the current economic recovery).

During the first six months on Mr. Trump’s watch, net new subsidized private sector job creation accounted for 22.29 percent of total job creation (“non-farm” hiring, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics – BLS – defines it), for 23.41 percent of such hiring in the conventionally defined private sector, and of 30.57 percent of the net new jobs in the “real private sector.”

During the first six months of 2018, these shares all declined – to 18.85 percent, 19.75 percent, and 24.61 percent, respectively. At least as important, they were among the lowest recorded during the current recovery. In particular, they were all lower than they were during the first six months of President Obama’s last year in office – when they reached 28.57 percent, 31.57 percent, and 46.13 percent. That is, from January through June of 2016, the increase in subsidized private sector payrolls was nearly half as large as all net new hiring in the rest of the private sector (the “real private sector”) – which is much larger.

But during the first six months of this year, the subsidized private sector made a tremendous comeback.

These industries’ share of total net new U.S. hiring jumped from 18.85 percent to 30.88 percent. Its share of conventionally defined private sector hiring rose from 19.75 percent to 33.06 percent. And net payroll increases in the subsidized private sector compared with “real private sector” payroll increases more than doubled – from 24.61 percent to 49.38 percent.

Even worse, all three results were the highest registered during the current recovery.

The only (mildly encouraging) news on the job quality front in this respect (accepting my assumption that relatively weak job creation in the “real private sector” is a troubling development): On a standstill basis (representing a snapshot, not measuring rate of change), the combined share of total hiring accounted for by the subsidized private sector and the public sector keeps falling. But that’s clearly because job creation in the public sector proper remains weak.

At the onset of the last recession – at the end of 2007 – these jobs amounted to 29.84 percent of all U.S. jobs tracked by the BLS. When the recovery began, this figure had increased to 32.20 percent. By last June, it has dipped to 30.94 percent. And as of this past June (again, preliminarily), it was down to 30.87 percent. That’s still higher than when the last recession began, so it’s possible to argue that the American labor market still hasn’t fully normalized. If the subsidized private sector’s recent job creation resurgence isn’t interrupted, such normalization will become an ever more distant goal.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Weak Real Wage Increases Under Trump Now Look Only a Little Less Weak

Tags

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Democrats, election 2020, inflation adjusted wages, manufacturing, private sector, real wages, Trump, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Those same new official U.S. inflation statistics that reveal how President Trump’s tariffs have or haven’t affected consumer prices can also show whether American workers’ paychecks have been keeping up with the (slowly) rising cost of living. And the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data contains some good news for the nation’s employees, for its manufacturing workers in particular, and as a result for President Trump – although mainly in comparison to inflation-adjusted wages’ lackluster previous performance during his administration.

According to the new real wage figures (which bring the story up to June), price-adjusted pay for workers in the private sector overall rose by 0.18 percent sequentially last month – about in line with the results for the last few months. The year-on-year numbers, though, were much better. Price-adjusted wages improved by 1.49 percent between June, 2018 and June, 2018 – compared with their bare 0.09 percent increase between the previous Junes. (The BLS doesn’t look at government workers’ pay because that’s largely the result of politicians’ decisions, and thus says little about the state of the national labor market.)

The only fly in this ointment: This year so far, annual advances in private sector wages have lost some momentum. The June year-on-year rise was somewhat lower than its January counterpart (1.68 percent).

Real wages in manufacturing lately have made better progress, reversing a trend that’s held until very recently. On a monthly basis, they were up 0.19 percent in June, slightly better than the increase for the private sector generally. The June annual rise of 0.64 percent was less than half the overall private sector figure, but was much better than the change between June, 2017 and June, 2018. Yet that’s only because during that period, real manufacturing wages actually fell by 1.10 percent.

And over longer time periods, the manufacturing results have been similarly mixed compared with the trends for private sector wages generally. For instance, during this calendar year so far, the advance in real manufacturing wages has been more than twice as fast as that for all private sector workers – 0.37 percent to 0.18 percent. Alternatively put, whereas the annual gains in real private sector wages have slowed since January of this year, the 0.64 percent June figure for manufacturing represents a major acceleration from January’s 0.09 percent rate.

Constant dollar manufacturing wages have even closed the immense gap that opened earlier during the current economic recovery with overall private wages.

From the mid-2009 beginning of the ongoing economic expansion (American history’s longest ever) to this June, after-inflation manufacturing pay is up only 1.03 percent in toto versus the 6.01 percent increase for the overall private sector. In other words, the real private sector wage improvement, however modest in and of itself, has been 5.83 times faster.

As of the previous June, however, the gap was 12.05 to one – more than twice as great.

Nevertheless, when it comes to real wages, President Trump still faces a big political problem: Under his administration so far, they’ve risen much more slowly than during the most comparable Obama administration period, both for the private sector overall and especially for manufacturing.

Specifically, during the first 28 months of President Trump’s tenure, after-inflation private sector wages have increased by only 2.25 percent in all, and real manufacturing wages have inched up only 0.09 percent. During the last 28 months of the Obama administration, these numbers were 3.09 percent and 3.52 percent, respectively. If the real wage increases and the private sector-manufacturing gap don’t start getting considerably better soon, expect to hear a lot about such numbers from smart Democrats as the 2020 election approaches.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Real Wages Remain a Trump Economy Weakness

Tags

Barack Obama, blue-collar workers, Employment-Population ratio, inflation adjusted wages, Labor Force Participation Rate, manufacturing, non-supervisory workers, private sector, production workers, real wages, slack, Trump, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As I’ve written repeatedly, I’m convinced that the economic data conclusively show that the U.S. economy on numerous fronts has kicked into a higher gear during the Trump years. But last week’s inflation-adjusted wage figures are an important reminder of one big exception: American workers’ price-adjusted take- home hourly pay.

Indeed, by every relevant measure, these real wages during Mr. Trump’s first 27 months as President have been rising at a pace slower than that during his predecessor Barack Obama’s final 27 months in office. Ditto for manufacturing workers, whose fortunes have been such a Trump focus.

And the comparison flatters Obama even when the data for blue-collar workers – generally the lowest paid members of the American workforce – are stripped out, although in absolute terms the Trump-era performance here has been somewhat better.

Here are the percentage changes through May. (In the lingo of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks these numbers, blue-collar workers are “production and non-supervisory workers.”  And as usual, public sector workers are excluded because their pay levels are overwhelmingly determined by politicians’ decisions, and thus say little about the fundamentals of the economy or the job market.)

                                     m/m        y/y   1^st 27 Trump months  last 27 Obama months

private sector:            +0.18     +1.30              +2.06                         +3.00

manufacturing:          +0.28     +0.46               -0.09                         +2.96

private production:    +0.32     +1.73              +2.29                         +3.27

mfg production:        +0.23     +1.03              +2.08                          +2.73

These results continue to be especially surprising given overall unemployment rates that have been at multi-decade lows – which should be forcing wages up, as employers find themselves forced to offer higher pay in order to compete for increasingly scarce workers. And although, as I’ve written, it’s possible that manufacturers in particular have held the line on wages because they’re not able to find workers with anything close to the skills they need, I wonder how understanding such workers will be about this explanation when it comes time to vote for President in 2020.

At the same time, here’s what’s not open to debate: Despite the plunge in the unemployment rate, other measures – notably the Employment-Population ratio and the Labor Force Participation Rate – show that there’s plenty of slack left in the U.S. labor market. If politicians and business leaders really want to see real wages rise healthily again, they’ll need to figure out how to lure able-bodied Americans still on the sidelines back to work.