U.S. worker productivity rebounded in the third quarter while hourly wages rose moderately, further signs the economy is strengthening.
Productivity—a measure of goods and services produced in the U.S. per hour worked—rose at a 3% annual rate in July through September, the Labor Department said Wednesday, the biggest jump in three years.
In addition to the libraries and recreation centers, the strike brought to a standstill street cleaning, senior centers, the hauling away of illegal dumping, fire and building inspections, parking citations, after-school programs, and the filing of non-emergency crime and traffic reports. When strong winds Monday night knocked down 15 trees and many more branches, emergency contractors were brought in to clear them, said city spokeswoman Karen Boyd.
After six months of study and negotiation, the city of more than 36,000 located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Pasadena developed an unusual five-point “CalPERS Response Plan“ that does not cut staff or services.
Five years later, he’s in court making an expansive case that government agencies should be able to adjust pension benefits for current workers, too.
A new brief his office filed in a union-backed challenge to Brown’s 2012 pension reform law argues that faith in government hinges in part on responsible management of retirement plans for public workers.
“At stake was the public’s trust in the government’s prudent use of limited taxpayer funds,” the brief reads, referring to the period when he advocated for pension changes during the recession.
The decline in the U.S. industrial base over the past couple of decades is the main factor eroding the share of American national income that goes to middle-class workers, according to consultants at McKinsey & Co.
For decades, labor’s share of gross domestic product has shrunk—while the share that goes to capital like profits, interest and rent, has risen. The McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s research arm, finds that manufacturing accounts for more than two-thirds of the overall decline in labor’s share of gross domestic product since 1990. That, in turn, has harmed the prospects of the middle class and widened income inequality.
Wages are supposed to track worker productivity, and from the end of World War II until 1973 they did. Then, something happened: Productivity kept rising but wages did not. Many on the left argue the link is now broken and redistributing income from the wealthy downward would help workers more than faster economic growth. But a new study co-authored by Harvard University economist Lawrence Summers says that’s wrong. He and Anna Stansbury, a doctoral student at Harvard, found a strong and persistent link between hourly productivity and a variety of wage measures since 1973. The problem, they conclude, is that the positive influence of productivity on pay has been overwhelmed by other forces pushing the other way.
he Sacramento City Unified School District and the teachers union have reached an agreement on a new contract that gives teachers up to an 11 percent raise over the three-year contract and averts a strike for the 43,000-student district. . . . The new deal will give teachers a 2.5 percent raise retroactive to July 1, 2016 and another 2.5 percent raise retroactive to July 1 of this year. A third 2.5 percent raise will be given July 1, 2018.
The contract includes another 3.5 percent adjustment to the teacher salary schedule that will take effect in the third year of the contract, starting July 1, 2018.
As CalSTRS rates are more than doubling, squeezing school budgets, an inflation-protection account that keeps teacher pensions from dropping below 85 percent of their original purchasing power has a large and growing excess of funding, $5.6 billion last year.
Double-digit salary increases for San Francisco educators proposed under contract terms agreed to over the weekend are among the highest being offered in the state, union and school district officials said a day after the two sides signed off on a tentative agreement. If approved by the 6,200 members of the United Educators of San Francisco, the city’s school workforce of teachers, early childhood educators, librarians, nurses, classroom assistants and social workers would receive an 11 percent raise over three years, in addition to annual bonuses. The overall compensation package would grow to 16 percent pending passage of a parcel tax that many city leaders hope to place on the ballot next year.
U.S. workers boosted output per hour this summer at the best rate in three years, a sign that long sluggish productivity gains might finally be breaking out. Nonfarm business-sector productivity increased at a 3.0% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Thursday. The gain was better than economists had expected and the largest quarterly improvement since the third quarter of 2014. Productivity is on pace to grow this year at the best pace since 2010, when the economy was first emerging from a deep recession. That’s an improvement from near zero much of 2015 and 2016.
Medicaid pays for elderly and disabled individuals who need support with activities of daily living to receive support at home from a caregiver. But California and 10 other states deduct union dues from caregivers’ Medicaid payments, in many cases without the knowledge or approval of patients and their caregivers. Given the fact that many caregivers work in their own homes caring for loved ones and relatives, unions typically have little role to play in exchange for the dues they collect.
Compensation costs increased 0.7 percent for civilian workers, seasonally adjusted, from June 2017 to September 2017. Over the year, compensation rose 2.5 percent, wages and salaries rose 2.5 percent, and benefits rose 2.4 percent.
This increase in average hourly earnings stems from a 2.5-percent increase in average hourly earnings being offset by a 2.3-percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
The increase in real average hourly earnings combined with no change in the average workweek resulted in a 0.2-percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this period.
Median weekly earnings of the nation’s 114.9 million full-time wage and salary workers were $859 in the third quarter of 2017 (not seasonally adjusted). This was 3.9 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 2.0 percent in the CPI-U.
Economic activity in the Twelfth District continued to expand at a moderate pace during the reporting period of mid-August through September. Overall price inflation was flat and remained low, while upward wage pressures strengthened somewhat, and labor market conditions tightened further. Sales of retail goods picked up, and growth in consumer and business services remained strong. Conditions in the manufacturing sector improved, while activity in the agriculture sector was flat. Contacts reported continued strong activity in residential real estate markets, and conditions in the commercial real estate sector remained solid. Lending activity grew at a moderate pace.