To listen to my assessment of the status and condition of the US working class this labor day, September 4, 2017, go to my Alternative Visions radio show on the progressive radio network…
GO TO
http://prn.fm/?s=Alternative+Visions
OR GO TO:
http://alternativevisions.podbean.com
SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT:
Dr. Rasmus takes stock of the condition of the US working class today. Discussed are the true condition of jobs and employment and how official government statistics underestimate contingent jobs, discouraged and missing labor force jobs, how labor force participation fails to account for millions, how government surveys of jobs underestimates, and how ‘hidden unemployment’ means jobless today is still 15-20 million. Working class wage stagnation the past decade, 2007 to 2017, is estimated with effects of contingent labor, gig labor, free trade, capital substitution, de-unionization, and privatization of healthcare and pension benefits; how workers real wages are less than reported due to housing-medical-education cost inflation, shifting tax burdens, and rising debt interest payments. The show concludes with discussion of new employer offensives against unions, focusing on open shop (right to work) Koch brothers offensives and new initiatives to outlaw agency shop and dues check off provisions in union contracts. Acknowledging the dismal scenario, Rasmus concludes that instead of stepping up defense of unions and workers’ interests, the Democratic party continues to retreat further into the morass of identity politics.
Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
Jack Rasmus 
I wrote a one-pager for the Labor Day celebration up here in Mariposa County. You’ll find it interesting. First, the non-institutional civilian population, at 255.357 million (Table A1) is the correct denominator, not 325 million. That brings down the total missing from the labor force from over 9 million to 7.5 million. The National Jobs for All Coalition does a good job of putting the data together. NJFAC.org — They put it at 18.2 million who can’t find a job, 10.9% of labor force. The official U6 is 8.6%, which understates by 2.3% or 11 million. So officially it’s 7.1 million who can’t find work, when by njfac figures is 18.2 million. Table A 16, at BLS, shows 5.852 million as discouraged and out of labor force. It could and most likely is a bit more than that, but not captured. If we had a national full employment program that paid a living wage, these uncounted workers would come out of the shadows. You’ll see below that I’ve added the group that works full-time and year-round for under poverty, and the key figure is 21.7%. But even that is inadequate. Call it 45% by looking at the Social Security report on wage labor. Call it 50%, in my opinion. See my details about average income for the lower-earning half. My one-pager:
Labor on Labor Day, 2017
Officially the unemployment rate is 4.3%, but more accurately 10.7%.
Adding the missing workers who have dropped out of the labor market, and adding the
part-time workers who want full-time work, the rate is 10.7%. (17.7 million workers)
Then add another 10.7% who work full-time but are paid below the poverty level for a family of four, and the rate is 21.4%.
21.4% are either un-employed, under-employed, or grossly under-paid.
See the web page National Jobs for All Coalition for full documentation.
The Social Security Administration report on wage income for 2015 reports that half of U.S. workers (80 million) earn under $30,000 a year, and their average income is below $13,000, and their combined income is less than 8% of the total national income (about $1.028 trillion). Not very much for half of all who work.
(see SSA report: https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2015)
In 2011 almost 30% of Americans lived in households whose income was insufficient to achieve
a “safe and decent” standard of living, according to the author of the U.S. Census report
called the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM).
(see my blog, http://benL8.blogspot.com, and
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2013/demo/sehsd2013-28.pdf, page 23, Kathleen Short)
Some 33% of private sector jobs pay $15.68 an hour, and some 67% pay $26.81 an hour. The average annual income for a non-supervisory worker is $38,728 (BLS, Table B-8). This is also $22.10 an hour. And $22.10 is the average hourly wage for all in July, 2017 (see BLS Table B-8). Therefore, the economy needs more jobs and higher wage income for the lower-earning 33%.
(see Dan Alpert article here:http://www.economonitor.com/danalperts2cents/2014/01/13/2013-u-s-jobs-report-card-after-all-is-said-and-done-more-was-said-than-done/)
Infrastructure
All presidential candidates in 2016 promoted their particular infrastructure proposal. The benefits of fixing or maintaining public property (roads, highways, schools, airports, sea ports, government buildings, water and sewage systems, and so on) are straight forward. The additional benefit comes by adding to total employment. The only problem is funding it. The solution is obvious, it lies in the total private net savings of U.S. households, which now comes to just under $95 trillion. The annual national income is $16.2 trillion — so the total private savings is nearly 6 times greater than the yearly income. If you had to pay 3% of your annual income ($500 billion) to upgrade your home, and could hire all your relatives and give them work — would 3% seem too big a price? It amounts also of 5/1000 of your net worth (o.5%).
The Program
We need to raise the minimum wage, increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to low income workers, increase total employment through infrastructure repair, and also increase human services to elders and to pre-schoolers, provide subsidies for child-care, add greater subsidies to housing assistance, and to public education especially college and trade school education, provide universal health care insurance to all citizens — in short the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with 73 House members and one senator, has a plan that will really make America great again.
My blog: Economics Without Greed http://benL8.blogspot.com,
Thanks Jack.
Thanks Ben for your always excellent comment and the data references. (You’re right, the 325 million is the population not the labor force; a typo error on my part. If and when the Trump infrastructure proposals materialize, I think we’ll find it hard to conceptualize it as infrastructure in the normal sense. It will be composed of real estate deals that reward commercial property developers at the expense of taxpayers–a form of a kind of privatization. He’ll call it infrastructure but very little will be in the sense normally thought of as such. And it will be token, since the corporate tax cuts on the way will cause further deficits and result in less spending than otherwise. That’s why Trump and friends went after ACA repeal (really big tax cuts) and now a general tax cut offensive first, instead of leading with infrastructure spending.