Posts Tagged ‘wages’
Costlier Healthcare, Lower Productivity
As healthcare co-payments rise, labor productivity drops as, unsurprisingly, employees buy fewer prescription drugs. For example, employees with chronic pain had 76.7 hours absent from work. But, for every $5 rise in their co-payment, absenteeism increased 1.3% to 3.1%, or about five workdays per year. With average hourly earnings of $31/hour fully loaded, the increase…
Read MorePrivate Sector adds 200K+ Jobs
For the 1st time in 5 years the private-sector added more than 200K jobs for 2 months in a row. That’s great news! The bad news is that if you have a job wages haven’t kept up with the rising cost of living. Average hourly wages actually fell in March — from $19.32 to $19.30.…
Read MoreFalling Income
In Feb there was no rise in average weekly wages, but there was a 0.5% inflation in consumer prices meaning that real incomes fell by 0.5%. They have now fallen in 5 of the last 6 months during with time it has shrunk by 2.3%. Thus, the anemic job growth we are experiencing is barely…
Read MoreWI Musings…
Unions are a way for suppliers of a particular service (firemen, policemen, teachers) to legally collude with respect to wages, vacations, holidays, pensions, healthcare and so on. It would be akin to cell phone companies agreeing to fix prices, service quality and band width. The worst service comes when there is no competition! Cable guy,…
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