A friend’s son graduated college this past June. He majored in journalism. He was an honor student, has freelanced pieces to several publications, and speaks two foreign languages. After months of looking he finally got a job — writing press releases for a local religious institution at a salary that doesn’t allow him to move out from his parents’ house.
I thought of this graduate while reading the latest jobs report that came out yesterday. It was a very good report in many ways. It showed far fewer job losses and a slightly lower overall unemployment number. But it lacked what all government reports seem to lack these days. A quality factor. A real world factor.
In a previous post I wrote about the idiocy of GDP numbers that show overall economic growth in this country without taking note in any way about how new wealth is distributed — a failure that explains why in recent decades our national growth has increased while most Americans’ standard of living has not (except for the top economic tier). The same defective numbers game comes into play with job growth (or in the case of the just released report, very small job losses compared to previous months). This report treats all jobs as if they were equal. Hardly the case.
If the average hourly wage of Americans increases at just about a penny an hour, which was what this just released report indicates, at the same time that benefits of all kinds are being reduced and even very modest inflation takes its bite, even most employed people are getting poorer.
This new jobs report was a welcome surprise. It was much better than I expected, and I’m always delighted to be wrong on the upside. But until our overall economy reflects a fair shake for the people who create wealth, and not just for those who play with other people’s wealth for their own benefit, official reports about the economy won’t comport very well with real life and lose much of their value in consequence.
How do we get that fairer shake? One way is through a fairer tax code. But more about that in a later post.