Manpower recently launched a blog called Manpower Employment Blawg. It's essentially a blog about employment law but they apparently have a sense of humor over there and a burning desire to sing.
Click below to view the exclusive world premiere of the Employment Law Sing-A-Long Video. Follow my bouncing head and sing along at the top of your lungs. (Warning: potential side effects could include nausea and/or gastrointestinal discomfort resulting from excessive lateral eye movement as well as instantaneous imbedding of all major employment law principles deep inside the cerebral cortex.)
They have more videos here on YouTube.com. Manpower doesn't appear to have a blog yet for people on the other side of the interview desk but that could change.
A CNN article explains how wages are not matching the increase in the GDP for most workers. The article says most workers real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) have been relatively stagnant this decade.
After rising quickly in the second half of the 1990s, most workers real wages have been stagnant in the 2000s, especially since 2003
While productivity jumped almost 20 percent since 2000, the real median hourly wage of all workers rose just 3 percent in the same period. Since 2003, productivity has risen 5 percent, while the median hourly wage fell 1.1 percent.
Women saw a bigger rise in wages between 2000 and 2007, up 4.7 percent. Real median wages for men during the same period were up just 1.1 percent.
Both high school and college workers saw hourly wage gains of about 2.5 percent since 2000.
Yet, in the period between 2003 and 2007, wage gains for median workers, male and female, as well as high school and college workers have all been flat or falling.
A chart on workinglife.org shows you how wages increased very little or decreased from 2000 through 2004. The data in that chart only goes through 2004 but after 2004 things got even worse. You can see another chart in this article. This is really bad news for workers especially when you look at the incredible rise in food and gas over the past few years. Only those wage earners on the very high end of the earnings curve have been seeing much in the way of wage increases. The CNN article also says that real wages for earners in the top 95% have risen 9.4% since 2000 and 5.1% since 2003.
The new August jobs report indicates that there was a reduction in non-farm payrolls of 4,000 jobs. The number of jobs created in June and July have also been reduced. Marketwatch reports that the job growth over the past three months has been a dismal 44,000. The economy needs to create at least 150,000 jobs per month just to absorb new workers entering the labor force.
Adding to the sense of weakness in employment, payrolls in June and July were revised lower by a cumulative 81,000.
Job growth has averaged 44,000 over the past three months.
The separate household survey showed a decline in employment of 316,000 in August, and a 24,000 drop in unemployment. But since the size of the labor force as calculated by the Labor Department fell by 340,000, the unemployment rate held steady.
Under the Clinton administration there was a monthly average of 236,000 new jobs. Under the Bush administration the number of jobs created rarely even reaches the 150,000 minimum needed and it has now returned to negative numbers.
