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Nine Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: Nine out of every 10 Silicon Valley jobs pays less now than when Netflix first launched in 1997, despite one of the nation's strongest economic booms and a historically low unemployment rate that outpaces the national average. While tech workers have thrived, employees in the middle of Silicon Valley's income ladder have been hit hardest as their inflation-adjusted wages declined between 12 and 14 percent over the past 20 years, according to a study from UC Santa Cruz's Everett Program for Technology and Social Change and the labor think tank Working Partnership USA, which examined the economic impact of technology companies.
Technology workers saw a median wage increase of 32 percent over the past 20 years, the study found. But Silicon Valley workers in virtually all other areas lost ground during that time. Across all jobs, wages for even the highest-paid 10 percent increased just under 1 percent, the study found. Meanwhile, the region's economy has been booming. Since 2001, the amount of money generated per Silicon Valley resident -- the area's per person GDP -- has grown 74 percent, the study found. That's more than five times faster than the equivalent national growth. Also, a smaller percentage of wealth is going to workers. "In 2001, about 64 percent of the money generated in Silicon Valley went to workers," reports Mercury News. "By 2016, that was down to 60 percent. The drop translated to $9.6 billion -- about $8,480 in potential pay and benefits per worker -- that instead went to investors and owners, according to the study."
Technology workers saw a median wage increase of 32 percent over the past 20 years, the study found. But Silicon Valley workers in virtually all other areas lost ground during that time. Across all jobs, wages for even the highest-paid 10 percent increased just under 1 percent, the study found. Meanwhile, the region's economy has been booming. Since 2001, the amount of money generated per Silicon Valley resident -- the area's per person GDP -- has grown 74 percent, the study found. That's more than five times faster than the equivalent national growth. Also, a smaller percentage of wealth is going to workers. "In 2001, about 64 percent of the money generated in Silicon Valley went to workers," reports Mercury News. "By 2016, that was down to 60 percent. The drop translated to $9.6 billion -- about $8,480 in potential pay and benefits per worker -- that instead went to investors and owners, according to the study."
I know there are a lot of "elementary rules" when it comes to running a business. "Location, location, location", "law of supply and demand", etc. But one corporations in today's day and age just don't seem to get is this one:
Invest in your employees, and your employees invest in you.
Modern corporations continue to fester this flawed mentality that every employee is just a cog in the machine; if one breaks, replace it with another. But humans aren't machinery. We have this subconscious that interferes with our ability to work at a constant rate of speed and productivity; it requires sleep for one thing, and it distracts our ability to focus continuously due to emotions which interrupt our concentration. Emotions, including feeling jaded by our employer who decided to give all the new employees a raise, but cut veteran employee bonuses and benefits. Or feeling depressed, because your employer is continually threaten to cut your position and move it to another part of the country if you fail to meet your quota. Et cetera, et cetera.
Most employers have forgotten now that when employees feel -valued-, their emotion doesn't impede their production, but rather boosts it.
Real wages have been down for decades, and no, the Trump tax cut didn't change that https://www.bls.gov/news.relea...
I have an MBA and I cannot afford to pay for the house I grew up in. My father paid for it on a single wage and hadn't finished college. It is easy to see where the culprits are: a high reliance on imports for manufactured goods and a significantly large share of earnings being diverted away from labour and going to the highest earners.