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Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women's place in the world, according to a study being reported today. It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else. The differences found...

Unemployment Deconstructed by: Emily Miller, September 09, 2008 The unemployment rate spiked at 6.1 percent last week, the Labor Department reported, the highest since September 2003. Nevertheless, a recent study released by the Heritage Foundation concludes that job quality is improving in the US. “America is not becoming a nation of low-wage fast-food workers,” said James Sherk, Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy at the Heritage Center for Data Analysis and author of the report. “Job opportunities are expanding with the typical job paying more than it did a generation ago.” The report indicated opportunities for jobs are “expanding” alongside an...

Monthly salaries in Sweden averaged 25,800 kronor ($3920) last year, an increase of 800 kronor compared with the previous year. Women’s salaries amounted to 84 percent of men’s salaries on average, unchanged from the year before, according to new figures from Statistics Sweden. In 2007, public sector workers earned an average of 23,900 kronor per month, a 500 kronor improvement from 2006 salary levels. Meanwhile, private sector salaries improved by twice as much, landing up 1,000 kronor to 26,700 kronor per month on average.

Our economic system — the market economy or capitalism — is a system of consumers' supremacy. The customer is sovereign; he is, says a popular slogan, "always right." Businessmen are under the necessity of turning out what the consumers ask for and they must sell their wares at prices which the consumers can afford and are prepared to pay. A business operation is a manifest failure if the proceeds from the sales do not reimburse the businessman for all he has expended in producing the article. Thus the consumers in buying at a definite price determine also the height of...

Chances are they probably aren't working. And who can you thank for that ... the government. Researchers at Northeaster University estimate that summer 2008 will be "the worst in post-World War II history" for teen summer employment. Only about one third of American teenagers will have a summer job and the rates are even lower for low-income and minority teens. So why is this? One of the main reasons is because of government mandated wage increases. Economic researchers show, yet again, that increasing the minimum wage destroys jobs for low-skilled workers and does nothing to fight "poverty." For every 10%...

The leftwingnuts at Center for American Progress said: "The minimum wage increase will not harm our economy." "The minimum wage increase will not cause price inflation. In Arizona, for example, the total cost of the wage increases is equal to 0.08 percent of total sales. The average business can fully cover the cost of the minimum wage by increasing revenue by less than 0.1 percent." "The minimum wage increase will not destroy job growth. Between 1997 and 2003, small business employment increased by 9.4 percent in higher minimum wage states, compared to 6.6 percent in states at the federal level."

Unions Blast Government Effort to Stop Hiring of Illegal Aliens By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor March 27, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - The Department of Homeland Security has re-issued a rule that labor unions and some business groups oppose. The "no-match" rule is intended to stop employers from hiring illegal aliens, but critics say it will have unintended consequences. The rule re-issued last week is the same one blocked by a federal district court in San Francisco last October. The Homeland Security Department (DHS) said the newly issued "supplemental" rule addresses all three concerns raised by the court on Oct. 10,...

Newstip 2-22-08 Obama, Savior of the Middle Class? Barrack Obama is running ads saying he will work for the middle class. One way he’ll do this is to raise the minimum wage. Wait a second, how does this help the middle class? By definition, the middle class is already making more than the minimum wage. Do they get a raise when the minium wage goes up? Nope. They get a decrease. Think about it. Companies forced to artificially raise their bottom rates have to pay for it by cutting money somewhere else: Job cuts, increase prices of the goods they...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday decried anti-immigrant perceptions in the United States and argued that Mexican immigrants complement American workers. On his first trip to the U.S. as Mexico's president, Calderon said he is working to combat anti-Americanism in Mexico and to improve job prospects there to reduce migration. He said he hopes that Americans resist anti-Mexican sentiments. "The worst thing that happened in this country is this anti-Mexican or anti-immigrant perception of people. We need to contain this," Calderon said after a speech at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "I need to change...

Will Hillary Clinton as president tap into workers' wages to achieve her goal of health insurance for all Americans? The possibility exists as the candidate was pressed on the matter during a television interview today. Speaking on ABC's "This Week" program, the Democratic senator from New York said she might be willing to have wages garnisheed if people refuse to buy health insurance. "I think universal health care is a core Democratic value and a moral principle, and I'm absolutely gonna do everything I can to achieve that," Clinton said. "I think there are a number of mechanisms" possible, including...

Will Hillary Clinton as president tap into workers' wages to achieve her goal of health insurance for all Americans? The possibility exists as the candidate was pressed on the matter during a television interview today. Speaking on ABC's "This Week" program, the Democratic senator from New York said she might be willing to have wages garnisheed if people refuse to buy health insurance.

BEIJING, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- More than 40 percent of employees in China were unsatisfied with their salaries in 2007 amid rising costs of living, said a latest online survey. Covering more than 8,000 people of various professions nationwide, the survey was conducted earlier this month by www.zhaopin.com, one of China's leading job-hunting websites. When the respondents were asked to rate their degrees of satisfaction on salary, 21.5 percent ticked 70-100 points representing "very satisfied and satisfied," 36.4 percent chose 60-70 points indicating "an average degree," with the remaining 42.1 percent opting for 60 points below to express their strong...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is warning of a sea change coming to the global economy. Greenspan says the glory days of low-cost imports from China are coming to an end, sending a wave of inflation to the U.S., reports Bloomberg. After a speech in London yesterday, Greenspan answered an audience member's question about whether China's rapid economic growth will translate into rising prices. Greenspan cited an index of import prices from China to the U.S. that revealed prices are already beginning to trend higher (see chart). The index "finally turned higher in the spring," said Greenspan. "It's saying...

Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows. While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show. The combined income of all Americans in 2005 was slightly larger than it was in 2000, but because more people were dividing up the national income...

" McDonald's in Sidney, Mont., said he tried advertising in the local newspaper and even offered up to $10 an hour to compete with higher-paying oil field jobs. Yet the only calls were from other business owners upset they would have to raise wages, too. Of course, Francis' current employees also wanted a pay hike." " "The only economic development we used to get was the creation of more economic development offices." "And workers have benefited. Utah workers saw a 5.4 percent average wage increase in 2006,Knold said. "

Young women in New York, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston and a few other of the nation's largest cities who work full time have forged ahead of men in wages, according to an analysis of 2005 census data.-Snip-The study by Queens College demographer Andrew A. Beveridge shows that all women from ages 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men's wages, or a median wage of $35,653, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent.-Snip-Also, many of those women are not marrying right after college, leaving them freer to focus on building careers,...

he day the first minimum wage increase in 10 years was enacted, Democrats and Big Labor made it clear they would ask for another hike soon. On Tuesday, a 70 cent increase to the federal minimum wage went into effect. The minimum wage increase, passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress in May, will increase 70 cents twice more over the next two years, until it reaches $7.25 in 2009. To celebrate, labor activists held a rally on Capitol Hill to thank congressional Democrats for delivering the pay raise—and demanded more. “Even when we get to $7.25, it’s not enough. We have...

After a grudging admission of the actual numbers and an "it's good but not great" quote from an unimpressed economist, here is the incriminating passage:Wage gains for most Americans last month were slow, and are most likely still trailing inflation. Compared with June 2006, average hourly earnings for workers in nonmanagement jobs increased 3.9 percent, to $17.38, less than the 4 percent advance in May.

If you have any doubts government-mandated minimum-wage laws kill jobs for the poor rather than lift them out of poverty, just take a look at what is happening right now in American Samoa. The latest minimum-wage law passed by Congress calls specifically for hikes in the U.S. territory – 50 cents a year annually until the continental rate of $7.25 is reached. This Washington-knows-best, one-size-fits-all approach is killing jobs in Samoa already – just days after it was signed into law by President Bush last Friday. StarKist had planned to expand its tuna production next month by hiring some 200-300...

Share this with All your Friends... And SHOW this to your children and grandchildren !!!! THE YEAR 1907 This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1907. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some of the U.S. Statistics for the Year 1907: ************************************ The average life expectancy in the U.S. Was 47 years old. Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. Had a bathtub . Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City Cost eleven dollars. There...

The master plan, it seems, is to move perhaps 40 million high-skill American jobs to other countries. U.S. workers have not been consulted. Princeton economist Alan Blinder predicts that these choice jobs could be lost in a mere decade or two. We speak of computer programming, bookkeeping, graphic design and other careers once thought firmly planted in American soil. For perspective, 40 million is more than twice the total number of people now employed in manufacturing. Blinder was taken aback when, sitting in at the business summit in Davos, Switzerland, he heard U.S. executives talk enthusiastically about all the professional...

Businesses took on 180,000 more workers in March, only slightly short of the 200,000 per month average during the last two months. The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage point to 4.4%, equaling its level of last October. Joblessness hasn't been lower since May 2001, just before the last recession. Wages also continued their recent upward march. Average hourly earnings of production workers advanced six cents to $17.22, and have risen 4% over the past year. Average weekly earnings rose even faster -- 4.4% during the year. Investors, facing the combination of a tighter jobs market and potentially inflationary wage...

THE NEW York Times recently reported that the earnings gap is now the widest since 1928, with the richest 1 percent of Americans having captured most of the economy's 2005 growth, and the bottom 90 percent getting nothing. Between 1979 and 2005, according to MIT professor Thomas Kochan, productivity of American manufacturing rose by about 70 percent, but the real wages of production workers remained flat. This economic pummeling of ordinary Americans has many causes, including deregulation of industries that once paid decent wages, the weakening of tacit social compacts in which bosses were ashamed to pay themselves hundreds of...

Evelyn Coke sat in her wood-frame home in Corona, Queens, a hobbled figure, not realizing that this is supposed to be her moment in the spotlight. For 20 years, she had cared for clients in their homes, bathing them, cooking for them, helping them dress and take their medications. But now, suffering from kidney failure, she is too ill to work. [...] The stakes in her case are considerable, not least because home care attendant is one of the nation’s fastest growing occupations. There are expected to be nearly two million aides by 2014, as the elderly population grows and...

SUPPOSE SOMEONE offered to import 350 foreign workers to New Bedford to work for less than the minimum wage. Since the unemployment rate is over 8 percent, we would expect public outrage. The city needs jobs, not more unskilled laborers. So it is no surprise that citizens seeking jobs started lining up at the Michael Bianco plant after Immigration and Customs Enforcement uncovered 350 illegal immigrants. [...] Contrary to popular belief, illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. The victims may not have a voice, but they are low-paid, low-skilled American workers. Many are historically disadvantaged groups such as minorities...

American businesses are largely unprepared for a seismic workforce change that will get underway in the coming decade, as tens of millions of baby boomers retire and far fewer new employees arrive to take their place. That's the conclusion of a study being released today by Boston College's Center on Aging & Work. The report, which surveyed 578 companies and other organizations, finds that only 12 percent have planned in-depth and more than a quarter have failed to plan at all for the changing demographics projected to create a worker shortage. [...] Drawing on its employer survey, it finds that...

WASHINGTON -- Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said allowing more skilled immigrants to work in the United States would help keep the income gap from widening. Inequality of incomes is the "critical area where capitalist systems are most vulnerable," Greenspan said yesterday in Washington at a conference on maintaining the competitiveness of US capital markets convened by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. "You cannot have a system that we have unless the people who participate in it believe it is just." Allowing more skilled workers into the country would bring down the salaries of top earners in the United States,...

In time-honored tradition, recent political-economic discourse has revolved around some form of the “Two America’s,” the “Middle Class Squeeze,” or the “Rich vs. Poor.” This political minefield of “wealth creation versus redistribution” is no place for a business economist. But if there really is a huge swath of Americans experiencing falling incomes and living standards, this would signal some serious ramifications for the economy and for investors. For example, if incomes were falling, credit problems would likely proliferate, government tax revenues might be weak, interest rates could fall, and the economy would be at greater risk of recession than the...

Who, on average, is better paid—public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker

The US economy last year recorded its lowest rate of labour productivity growth in more than a decade, with growth in output per hour worked falling behind the EU and Japan. The fall casts further doubt on the ability of the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as the US economy slows. Research to be published on Tuesday by the Conference Board, the international business organisation, shows that US labour productivity in the whole economy grew by 1.4 per cent in 2006 as slower economic growth was combined with a rapid rise in employment. [...] The US slowdown in whole...

In the first hundred hours of the just-started session of Congress, the new leadership promises to raise the minimum wage. The Democrats won't be opposed by many Republicans. Raising the minimum wage is definitely popular. Voters in six states approved higher minimums last Election Day. State politicians in both parties are practically drooling with eagerness to "help" lower-income workers. We all want the poor to make more money. So if government can raise wages by decree, why are the popular proposals so stingy? Let's really do something for the poor. Let's raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour. Even...

[...] When Mr. Bailey discovered that Mario was in the country illegally, he wanted to help him. So Mr. Bailey, [...]went to a lawyer to see if he could help Mario get a visa. That's when the president of Bailey Family Builders ran into a little-understood roadblock to legal immigration for the millions of Mexicans and others who perform manual-labor jobs in the U.S.: Only 5,000 work visas are available every year for unskilled laborers. "We don't have a system that recognizes the realities of the U.S. economy," said Mr. Bailey, president of the Home Builders Association of Dallas-Fort Worth....

U.S. companies are about to wrap up their fourth consecutive year of spectacular profit growth, filling corporate coffers with cash and keeping the bull market alive on Wall Street. Total earnings of the blue-chip Standard & Poor's 500 companies have risen at double-digit percentage rates for 18 consecutive quarters, an unprecedented streak. But to many rank-and-file workers, the booming bottom line may only serve as a reminder of what has been missing from their own paychecks. Wages of average workers have just begun to improve in recent months after badly lagging behind inflation for most of this decade. Amid the...

Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary and Citigroup executive, meets Wednesday with the House Democratic Caucus to begin educating its new members on the politically correct way to think about the economy. "Fiscal responsibility" is his standard theme and no doubt some freshmen will want to hear his views on trade and globalization and other large concerns. A political friend asked me: If you were in the room, what would you ask? So I gave him a list of challenging questions. These might or might not get passed along to House members. It seems unlikely, in any case, that freshly-elected...

Qatar 'to pay Palestinian wages' Palestinian civil servants have protested over unpaid wages Qatar has agreed to pay the salaries of 40,000 Palestinian education workers for several months, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya has said. Mr Haniya said the amount would total more than $22m (£11.1m) a month. The Hamas-led Palestinian government has been struggling to pay its workforce since March when Western donors suspended direct aid. They want Hamas to renounce violence and to recognise Israel. Hamas has rejected the demands. The US and the European Union regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation. FOREIGN AID * April 2006 -...

Cut Corporate Taxes to Boost Wages? To boost future wage growth, Democrats have suggested raising the minimum wage, making college more affordable, and tweaking the tax code to try to prevent U.S. companies from moving jobs overseas. Here's another idea, one it seems that only the GOP could love–but it was actually adopted by Spain's Socialist Party-led government earlier this year, Germany's Social Democrats in 2000, and Britain's Labor Party in 1999: Cut corporate income taxes. The combined top federal, state, and local corporate tax rate in the United States is 39.3 percent, the second highest (after Japan) among the...

With energy prices now sharply lower than a few months ago and the improving job market forcing employers to offer higher raises, the buying power of American workers is now rising at the fastest rate since the economic boom of the late 1990s. The average hourly wage for workers below management level — everyone from school bus drivers to stockbrokers — rose 2.8 percent from October 2005 to October of this year, after being adjusted for inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only a year ago, it was falling by 1.5 percent. In recent years, many Americans grew...

Once again, the tech industry is putting heavy pressure on Congress to expand the H-1B visa program... ...The industry claims that it needs to import workers to remedy a severe labor shortage. Yet this flies in the face of the economic data...

ITEM: On Election Day, ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage passed overwhelmingly in all six states where the activist group ACORN and the labor movement made them a priority. These included the bellwether states of Missouri, Montana, and Ohio, where the wage initiatives contributed to a surge in turnout and helped progressive Democrats win narrow Senate victories. Since only about 7 percent of workers are helped directly by a higher minimum wage, the vote was widely seen as a symbolic expression of distress by the broad, working middle class seeking a change in economic priorities. Item: The group Trade...

American paychecks are rising again at a pace not seen since the 1990s. The pay increase amounts to 4 percent on average over the past 12 months, and it comes at a very helpful time for millions of households. For three years, pay increases haven't kept pace with the rising cost of living. Then came this year's housing slowdown, which has further squeezed family finances. Those setbacks, however, are now being offset by rising income. Four percent may not sound like much, but you have to look back to 1997 to find a calendar year with a gain that big....

WASHINGTON -- When the Democrats were campaigning to take over Congress, they benefited from a tidal wave of political anger aimed at the Republicans who had been in charge for the past 12 years. But as the Democrats prepare to take control of the House and Senate, it is their legislative proposals that are in the spotlight, drawing much closer critical scrutiny than they received in this year's election. As one top GOP political strategist told me, "They are the ones who are in trouble now." The Democrats won't assume power until January, but their proposals to pull out of...

To adopt Section 34a of Article II of the Constitution of the State of Ohio. Except as provided in this section, every employer shall pay their employees a wage rate of not less than six dollars and eighty-five cents per hour beginning January 1, 2007. On the thirtieth day of each September, beginning in 2007, this state minimum wage rate shall be increased effective the first day of the following January by the rate of inflation for the twelve month period prior to that September according to the consumer price index or its successor index for all urban wage earners...

Minimum wage raises that have passed in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio and to be proposed by the liberal Democrats - who are now pretending to be moderates for the middle class - will suck billions out of the economy. People must think the money for these raises come out of thin air . When in fact, companies pay for these raises by raising prices and cutting jobs. Any short term gains are quickly erased by larger economic losses. In the end, those who make above minimum wage will see a decrease in income. Thanks to the liberal-run public education...

by Mark Finkelstein October 6, 2006 - 07:51 Paul Krugman teaches teaches economics at Princeton, and has done the same at MIT. Enron apparently thought enough of his understanding of the dismal science to hire him as a consultant - though Krugman has at times been reluctant to disclose that fact. But judging by his latest anti-Wal-Mart jeremiad [subscription required] in this morning's New York Times, you really have to wonder if the good professor of economics . . . understands anything about capitalism. His portrait of Wal-Mart is a caricature of greedy management conducting what he calls a "war...

the rant the kine that tread the corn2006.09.24 As one who comes from a background of working class poverty, I know what it's like to live in fear. While the average middle-class worker gets a yearly raise (plus a Christmas bonus and plenty of paid holidays) and has a little cash put away for a rainy day, most low-skilled workers are people who live paycheck to paycheck and who do not receive regular wage increases. These workers are extremely reluctant to agitate for more money out of fear of being fired and replaced by a lower-paid foreign worker (legal or...

Lately, there has been a big debate going on among Democrats about why workers aren't outraged by their economic condition, and therefore more hostile to Republican economic policies and more sympathetic to Democratic policies. On the surface, it would appear that workers should be in open revolt. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker is no better off today than he was seven years ago in real terms. In August 2006, his average weekly earnings were $275.49. In August 1999, they were $275.61 (both in constant 1982 dollars). Census Bureau data confirm this trend. According to recently...

You will have seen, around and about, a lot being said about how the current recovery just isn't feeding through to the average man and woman out there. Wages don't seem to be rising; in fact, Paul Krugman recently made the astonishing claim that they haven't risen for the average man, per hour, since 1973. Rather than rootling around in Census Bureau data to show the inanity of this claim (largely because neither you nor I desire a simple rehash of something I wrote here back in January) I thought I'd try and offer something constructive. A solution if you...

FOR years it has been a workplace truism: jobs with fat paychecks are found in the private sector, while jobs with ho-hum pay but rock-solid benefits are found with the government. But research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute suggests that the truism has not been true for some time.As of June 2005, overall compensation costs were 46 percent higher for state and local governments than for private-sector employers, according to the institute’s research analyst, Ken McDonnell. And when Mr. McDonnell separated the cost of providing current pay from the cost of providing benefits, he found that government employees were...

by Mark Finkelstein September 1, 2006 - 07:01 I kept waiting. Dutifully wading through Paul Krugman's prolonged subscription-required kvetch over the economy, The Big Disconnect, I figured I'd eventually be rewarded for my perseverence with his proposed solutions - if only to be able to critique them. But the New York Times columnist's economic nostrums never came. Krugman's basic complaint is that workers haven't shared in the fruits of the extended economic expansion. This is Krugman being late to the MSM party noted here, here, and here. Even so, he chooses to ignore the reporting in his own paper that...

What a difference three days make. 72 little hours. In that time, a New York Times reporter went from tolling the death knell of real wage growth to reporting a 7-percent wage jump over last year after inflation. “[T]he current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages,” The New York Times’ David Leonhardt and Steven Greenhouse somberly noted in their page A6 article in the August 28 edition. Greenhouse and Leonhardt added a political spin to data showing the “median...