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  • Tack: 
  • Comments (427)
  In fact, that's the critical part, as the economy, ultimately, is driven by the behavior of the >90% with jobs, not the <10% without them.

  Sep 16 01:02 PM | Link | Reply
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  • SecretaryNo...: 
  • Comments (24)
  •  • StockTalk (31)
  Gee, my wife, myself, most of family who all have degrees and work for fortunre 500 companies have taken 5-10% pay cuts in direct pay or loss of 401k match this year. Where does everyone else work?

  Sep 16 01:09 PM | Link | Reply
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  • Neil459: 
  • Comments (1075)
  •  • Instablog (1)

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  • perceptivemind.com
  Listen to Obama, and Gietner the recession is over. Come on, get with it.

  Sep 16 01:35 PM | Link | Reply
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  • dondon: 
  • Comments (85)
  Last year I could not give my employees a raise but I did not cut wages or benefits. This year will probably be the same. My sales are down 20% and when I talk to other business owners, they say the same. Maybe the NYT writer has been talking only to employees at GS, JPM, MS and Citi.

  Sep 16 01:43 PM | Link | Reply
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  • vboring: 
  • Comments (126)

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  • vboring.blogspot.com
  Agreed. This article smells of BS. Maybe they didn't count furloughs, reduced hours for part time workers, and reduced benefits.
  
  Or maybe it is a shift in the median. Maybe the layoffs were concentrated in low paying jobs, so the median salary has increased and they misunderstood this as evidence of pay raises.

  Sep 16 02:01 PM | Link | Reply
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  • Greyowl: 
  • Comments (56)
  Actually, there was a pay raise for a lot of employees, which is usually not taken into account - increase in costs of medical insurance.
  
  Most employers do not pass yearly increases to employees, but in reality it is part of their compensation. And, recession or not, it goes up, up...

  Sep 16 02:45 PM | Link | Reply
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  • Andy Harless: 
  • Comments (12)

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  • Atlantic Asset Management, LLC
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  • Employment, Interest, and Money
  I wouldn't break out the champagne and noisemakers just yet. The data from the surveys that the author cites are seasonally adjusted, and the pay data from employment report are notoriously noisy and subject to composition effects (e.g. if most people losing jobs are low-wage workers, then average wages appear to go up).
  Looking at the seasonally unadjusted data from the Employment Cost Index (ECI, to which the author links but apparently refers only to the adjusted data), the change in the latest quarter was the same as in the previous quarter. The first quarter looked particularly bad because there was a seasonal expectation of wage growth; the second quarter didn't look quite as bad, because there was less seasonal expectation, not because wage growth actually picked up. In strange times like the present, I'm particularly distrustful of seasonally adjusted data. The 12-month rate of wage growth from the ECI is continuing to decline. Until I see a more substantial trend reversal, I would say that wages are still a problem.

  Sep 16 04:35 PM | Link | Reply