Wage Growth Slows Across the Country (axios.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Wages in the United States are going up, but their growth is shrinking, says Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain. Wages should be rising an average of 3%-4% given the tightness of the job market, Chamberlain says. According to official data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, wage growth was a lower 2.6% in February. Glassdoor data -- based on a survey of 100,000 salaries posted by the jobs site every month -- show even lower growth, shrinking to just 1% last month.

Comments

H1B Program a success

[Seven Spirals]

If wages are stagnating or dropping, then the H1B program is doing exactly what it was designed to: keep IT wages low. After all we can't expect our poor corporate overlords to simply pay us more because they have been reaping record profits. Everyone knows that the investor class and C-suite are the only ones that deserve any of the pie. If you want a raise, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and start your own multi-billion-dollar international corporation!

Re:H1B Program a success

[DigiShaman]

You T it up, I'll knock it out of the park. Batter up!!

H1B was supposed to be about getting the Wernher von Braun's and Albert Einstein's of the world to be a part of the American all-star team of talent. But, that's not what it became, let alone used for. H1B is specifically about driving the cost of labor down. It's not that America has a shortage of STEM workers. It has in fact a shortage of cheap slave-wage applicants willing to take the job. For that kind of stress to pay ratio, there's better forms of employment that pay the same with a lot less stress. Meanwhile, the Fed keep printing money to pay for the benefits needed by those either under or unemployed. So the top 1% investor class reaps the rewards of slave labor, while the national debt payoff gets thrown to the middle class. Essentially, most American's are getting financially fucked in all orifices.

Re:H1B Program a success

[Seven Spirals]

Well, Mr. Coward, I'd assert that it's an IT news site and it's probably okay to look at the story from an IT perspective. However, do I hate the H1B program? Absolutely! Am I supposed to be in love with a program designed to lower my wages?

Re:H1B Program a success

[ShanghaiBill]

The report is not about IT wages specifically

TFA is a mishmash of BLS statistics about the broader economy, and survey data from Glassdoor which skews toward tech.

The 2.6% figure is for the entire economy. H1Bs affect tech, but are negligible for the economy as a whole, so that is NOT the main reason for slow wage growth. Most likely reason is that labor availability is a lot more flexible than the official unemployment numbers predict, because there are a lot of long term unemployed being pulled back into the workforce.

Re:H1B Program a success

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Everyone knows that the investor class and C-suite are the only ones that deserve any of the pie. If you want a raise, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and start your own multi-billion-dollar international corporation!

And if you ever hear a C-suit suit at your company enthuse about the book _Crossing the Chasm_, circulate your resume immediately!

That is EXACTLY what it prescribes. right at the end of one of the later chapters, and the key to both its success as a book and the crashing of the companies where execs try to follow its advice.

The book says that the benefits of the company are due to the founders and NOT the early hires, whom they enticed with stock options and who actually did the grunt- and brain-work that built the company's success. The advice is to dump them, before their options fully vest, and keep the swag for the inner circle. It also says they have negligible bargaining power, work because they are driven by their inner compulsions, and will quickly find another position with another company (to be ripped off again, of course).

The way it breaks companies: The execs who fall for this fire them TOO SOON, when the secret sauce recipes and corporate lore are still mostly in their heads, rather than dumped into documentation, procedures, and wage-slaves. So the people who are still making the company go are gone, the machine grinds itself into non-function, and nobody left really understands why it's broken or how to fix it.

Take your lumps for Trump

[GameboyRMH]

Like the stock market losses due to recent attempts to initiate a trade war and the wealth transfers to the 1% through tax "reform," this downturn is just part of Making America Great Again, and you should accept your losses with pride for the glory of the Dear Leader. Things will get better...real soon...any day now...

Re:Take your lumps for Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

1) There's every indication that this is a huge stock market bubble, also the stock market isn't the economy.
2) Lowering taxes isn't always good; it's going to lead to cuts in services and a huge deficit (if you care about that sort of thing).
3) 5% wage growth in 2 years isn't good; if wages were growing at the nominal 3-4% each year, in two years they should have grown 6.09-8.16% due to compounding.

So, uh, yeah give him credit for doing things poorly and setting up a big stock market bubble? Sure.

Re:Take your lumps for Trump

[PopeRatzo]

Are you talking about the 40% increase in the stock market since he took office

The Dow was 19,826 on the day Donald Trump took office, and it's 24,005 as of a few minutes ago. Now math is not my best subject, but I'm not sure that's a 40% increase.

Oops, make that 23,963 as of 10:58am PST.

For the record, the economic growth during the Obama Administration was faster and steadier. He was the first president since before WWII to not take us into a recession at any point in his presidency.

Oops, make that 23,941 as of 11:01am PST.

Re:Take your lumps for Trump

[GameboyRMH]

Time will tell, but so far, we are still on a trajectory which is much improved over the last administration's. Remember that.

Not an improved trajectory, just further along the same trajectory (at least until recently). To bring this article up to date:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/1...

The bull market is 109 months old. Trump owns 17 of them.

Including these months:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Re: Take your lumps for Trump

[GameboyRMH]

Turning the economy around would mean tanking it. We can all be glad he hasn't done that.

Give the guy some time, he's showing a lot of "progress" on that front recently.

Re:Huh, wonder why

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so the wealthy are pulling strings to keep their wealth but we can fix this by stopping immigration?

I...don't think that's the solution you're looking for.

Re:Huh, wonder why

[Archangel Michael]

As a Libertarian, I have NO problem with free and open immigration. I would accept just about anyone who wants to work in the US here. I would limit immigrants from social welfare programs for a period of 15 years or until they complete all requirements and become full citizens of the US. I would also allow fast tracking people who serve in the military or guard.

What I have a problem with is people sneaking in. But that seems to be a hard distinction for some people to make.

Where's all that tax cut money

[mark_reh]

that the rich are supposed to be using to pay Americans higher wages?

Re:Where's all that tax cut money

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Caymens, Switzerland, Panama, [offshore destination of choice]. Oh, and for some of them it's a down payment on a bigger yacht.

Re:Where's all that tax cut money

[omnichad]

Lots of companies gave one-time bonuses to employees, while themselves getting a year-after-year benefit. They probably see this as a bribe to employees to convince them that the tax cuts are what they want too.

Not just the H1-B Program

[rsilvergun]

FedEx was about to open a new distribution center in Indiana but they skipped it because they'd increased productivity so much at their existing centers they didn't need it. We've become massively more productive.

Also, anyone else find it telling that the phrase used to describe succeeding without help describes a physically impossible event? It's like a bad joke everybody ran with.

Stop abandoning the working class

[rsilvergun]

Trump is a consequence of abandoning the working class. People like Hilary Clinton (and a lot of /.ers) tell guys in their 30s and 40s they need to retrain for skills they couldn't learn in their 20s with loans they can't afford and no money coming in to support themselves let alone the families they had before their jobs were automated/outsourced/replaced with an H1-B.

I've noticed a trend where everybody's in support of the government stepping in to help out until it's somebody else. Then it becomes teh Socialisms. This needs to stop. The working class needs solidarity. We need to stop pretending we can make it on our own and that there's no class warfare going on. We're getting picked apart here. Fighting among ourselves for scraps while the ruling class laughs in our face.

Policy wise this means:

• Medicare for all
• End the wars
• New New Deal
• Fix our infrastructure
• College for everyone

Nobody left behind. Everyone gets cared for and we stop complaining about having to pay for the occasional lazy surfer dude who doesn't work much or at all.

Re:Stop abandoning the working class

[outlander]

+1

Re:Huh, wonder why

[Archangel Michael]

"Who aren't causing trouble"

Being here illegally is causing trouble. Why? Because it encourages others to do the same, bypassing our laws. They all aren't paying taxes. They all aren't behaving themselves, They all aren't doing what you're claiming all of them are doing.

Hell you can be arrested for felonies and be released back into the public in sanctuary cities. You can be deported multiple times and sneak back in and commit crimes and be release back into society.

You are block grouping a variety of people together, conflating them as a single unit and giving them a pass in doing so. You're partially why, as a group, they are causing problems, because people like yourself make no distinction between breaking the law, and not breaking the law.

At least my solution gives no excuses for crossing the boarder without permission. You're just excusing it as if it were nothing.

Re:Huh, wonder why

[Archangel Michael]

Why we don't deport actual criminals in California. So that isn't really accurate either. Nice try though.

Averages - careful of assumptions

[Catbeller]

Wages up 2.7%? Not that I can see. That is an *average*. The well-paid have rising salaries, the crap-paid wages are shrinking, the average being a bit up. You also have to factor in that the poorly-paid have rents that are rising way faster than their 8.50 up to 9.05 bucks an hour, just about everywhere now. Housing for the poor and merely cash-strapped ain't being built, and probably never will be.