Who’s better off under the Bush administration? Who’s worse off? To answer this question, I’ve been looking at Bureau of Labor Statistics data on occupational income from 2001, the first year of George W. Bush’s presidency, and 2006, the latest year for which data is available.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean income of people who work as rock splitters in quarries was $13.92 per hour of work back in 2001, when the Bush administration was just getting started. That’s equivalent to $15.87 in the value of dollars in 2006, adjusting for inflation using the Consumer Price Index. By 2006, quarry rock splitters’ mean income was $13.91 per hour worked. That’s a nominal decrease of a penny per hour in income, but taking inflation into account it’s a real decrease of $1.96 an hour — a decrease of 12.3%. The people who make a Fred Flinstone living splitting rocks in quarries are not doing better under George W. Bush.
On the other hand, the average income of people who worked in management of marketing departments in 2001 was $37.70 per hour worked. That’s equivalent to $42.98 per hour in the value of dollars in 2006. By 2006, the mean income of these people who watch people who come up with advertisements had risen to $51.74 per hour. In nominal terms, that’s an increase of $14.04 in income per hour worked. And even after adjusting for the effect of inflation, the marketing management’s personal income rose by $8.76 in income per hour of work. That’s a rise of 20.4% in real income.
(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates for 2001 and 2006)
How do these rates of increase/decline in wages compare with the increase/decline of wages under Bush I and Clinton? In other words, is it a continuing trend, or attributable to Bush? I would generally assume that it’s a trend that manual labor is making less money and more educated employees were making more. It’d be interesting if this was inaccurate as a matter of history.
i remember a simple question asked in a philosophy class once: Who is more important in the community, the doctor or the garbage man? Everyone wanted to say doctor, but then we thought about it (at the prompting of the prof) and realized that without the garbage man the doctor is overwhelmed and could fall victim to the same disease as the general population if the garbage man were not there (ie. the plague, dissentary, cholera, etc.). So the skills of the doctor become moot if the garbage man is not valued.
Just a thought regarding unskilled labor.
It’s all a matter of education. Last I heard garbage men are valued very highly financially (due to the lack of people willing to do the job).
If most Americans were more educated and had skills that were more valuable globally (for example, in conducting intellectual labor which either creates new/better products via science, conducts health care, provides services to the new companies providing the new products such as PR and financial managers, etc) then those skills would eventually be less in demand and the wages for those jobs drop (case in point, outsourcing of programmers in America due to there being more programmers globally). As the number of people present in America who want to be porters drop (due to increased education) (since laborers must be present in America to do the job, as opposed to programmers who can be outsourced…can’t *easily* outsource a porter) then the wages would rise due to lack of supply for porters are consistent demand, then the wages will increase.
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing on the fact that all labor must be valued, otherwise it creates problems for society. I doubt there’s even disagreement on the source and solution of the problem. While it’s obvious that under Bush, wages have dropped for some service and blue collar sectors while increasing in white collar, while under Clinton that was not the case (kudos to Jim for doing the research), it’s important to also look at the underlying system as to why: Education, in addition to the types of jobs available in markets, influence wages. If there are a medium number of jobs for rock splitters and even more people who have the education and desire to be rock splitters, then rock splitters will make less money. If everyone becomes highly educated and very few people wish to be rock splitters, and there is a need for rock splitters in America, then rock splitters will make lots of money. If everyone is well educated, but there are few businesses or the businesses that exist have very little money for hiring, and therefore there are almost no jobs in any sector, then all wages will plummet. I guess the ideal goal is to have everyone becoming highly educated (and therefore sufficient taxes being collected from individuals and businesses), while at the same time making sure businesses have sufficient profits to continue to hire those people. Talk about a tough balancing act.