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More than Half of Americans Say They Didn't Get a Pay Raise this Year (marketwatch.com)
Although the economy saw new peaks in 2018, not all Americans report reaping the benefits. An anonymous reader shares a report: The majority of workers say they saw no salary increases this year, according to a new survey. More than 60% of Americans said they didn't get a pay raise at their current job or get a better-paying job in the last 12 months, according to a survey released Wednesday from finance site Bankrate.com. Meanwhile, executives have seen a surge in compensation, according to an August study from the Economic Policy Institute. The average chief executive officer at the 350 largest firms in the U.S. received $18.9 million in compensation in 2017, the study showed, a 17.6% increase over 2016. Despite those disparities, 91% of Americans say they have the same or greater confidence in the job market than they did one year ago, according to Bankrate.com.
I mean, look at this and you can see precisely why employees have no loyalty to their companies. Either at least give people inflation-based raises or merit ones on top or face the prospect of losing them.
Capitalism aims to get profit by paying labor less than it is worth.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
... for the already rich
The average chief executive officer at the 350 largest firms in the U.S. received $18.9 million in compensation in 2017, the study showed, a 17.6% increase over 2016. Despite those disparities, 91% of Americans say they have the same or greater confidence in the job market than they did one year ago, according to Bankrate.com.
Comparing the average American to the C-levels in the top 350 might be a little disingenuous. That said, something is seriously fucked up when the economy is going to crap while C-levels somehow get a 17.6% increase over 2 years.
And finally, and perhaps most pertinent, why isn't there a backlash? If this had been reported in Europe there would be hell to pay. Unions, political parties and ideological organizations would all protest and cause problems.
Hell, a week or three ago in Sweden somewhere, the politicians of Lidingo something municipality voted to increase their own salaries. There was such a ruckus that they in the end had to lower their salaries and apologize for being slithering opportunists. They were held accountable by the people.
In France, right now, well... France has a habit of taking things too far. But the French population do realize that if they band together, they have a voice and they can force change (or stasis, as in this case).
Don't you have a big statue or something to remind you of these lessons?
...for billionaires. Sorry rust-belt, all you get in you stocking is coal (literally).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Didn't Trump promise $4000 to $9000 average pay increase due to the tax cuts?
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I have no problem with employers who seek to pay the least they can. Employees who feel valued or need the job will stay. Some employers seek to make sure people feel fairly compensated others don't. It's their call.
People who feel like that employers have an obligation to look out for their employees should join a union if their employer isn't meeting that standard. That's what unions are for.
in the US the average inflation rate was 2.1% last year. and probably higher next year but CPI raises are backward looking. I believe Social security got a 2.9% CPI based increase this year.
So fo the average person, any raise under 2.1 to 2.9% wasn't a raise, it was a cost of living adjustment for inflation.
However that's the average person. Many people's incomes include things like benefits and the cost of those went up for employers. There's all sorts of other ways that high income earners dont' feel inflation the same way that lower income earners do. For example, if you have a big fat mortgage without and ARM then inflation is actually cutting the amount you are paying (effectively!) so it's actually helping.
So if you are a lower paid person and you did not get a raise nore than 2% then you got a cut due to inflation.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
is from changing jobs. Sad but something I've become used to in the last twenty years of working. It started out with getting a minimal cost of living raise one year and then twice that the next. No rhyme. No reason. That job got left by the wayside when they invited me to pursue other opportunities, along with 10% of the rest of the staff that year. It wasn't a layoff. Heavens no. It was Jack Welsh adjustment. Just enough people to keep those still there afraid that they might be next.
It's been the same pattern since then. It was always up and down and up and down. Only real raises when I moved onto another job. I kept asking for more and they kept putting up. Finally got one that felt right. Good management. Good people. Hope to stay here for some time.
This thread of screed from a bunch of computer weenie neckbeards who post from their mom's basement.
This 60% thing is an interesting statistic, but it would be more relevant if we could see the proportion of Americans who didn't get pay raises for the last 5 years or so. It's effectively citing a number without a baseline for comparison.
Additionally, it could also be phrased as "40% of Americans got a pay raise this year", and in the context of our recent depression (starting at around 2008) might be a piece of good news. We'll never know.
The economy only really started to take off about October of last year, so we've only had a little more than a year of good economy. Will this trend continue? It might be nice to see a sparkline for this pay raise information month-by-month to see if represents an increasing trend.
Additional to that, the article as posted in a negative light (60%, without baseline) and immediately dives into how management all got raises. It then goes on to talk about minimum wage and how inflation hit a 6-year high in July of 2018.
The article is all about class envy, trying to gin up outrage in order to get clicks. Isn't it simply *awful* how those evil managers reward themselves while keeping most worker wages the same!!!
(Inflation in July 2018 was 0.01%, yet another number cited without baseline to provoke outrage.)
Really. It's well known that wages have been flat for much of the 2000's, and others report that US wage growth is at a nine-year high.
Take a skeptics view of click-bait articles.
So here are the actual figures:
https://media.brstatic.com/201...
In the past 12 months, have you gotten a raise at your current job, gotten a better paying job, neither or both?
27% got a pay raise.
6% got a better paying job.
5% got both.
62% got neither.
Note: among respondents who are employed full time or part time.
Sounds to me like great numbers. A very large amount of people in my experience are very passive, and will not look for a better job, nor bother asking for a pay raise. They just go with the flow, which is the "neither" part. Which means all they get are inflation correction kind of raises, plus the union/collective bargaining items, but they don't actually get raises or better paying jobs.
To me that looks that if you're active enough to either look for a better job, or ask for a pay raise and your work performance entitles you to it, you're going to get it in the current job market. So go and do it if you're in that 62%. And remember that while doing that, you must be looking for a better job while doing it. Yes, that's additional effort. And yes, that's how you get a raise instead of being a part of passive 62%.
Spotted the American steel exec!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
1) Open salaries. You don't have to unionize but share salary information with your coworkers. There's a reason why companies like to keep this information secret. It's not to hide the salary of rock star that everyone knows does the lion's share of the work. It's to hide the fact that they're exploiting someone.
2) Renegotiate your compensation every 3 years. People tend to only ask for raises but the truth is that their entire compensation package is up for consideration. If they're not willing to pony up more cash for you then they might be willing to accelerate the timetable for your 401k vestment or give you more PTO. Look at the position and compensation package with fresh eyes.
3) No loyalty. Regularly apply for jobs with other companies. You're an asset to your company and they will have no qualms about letting you go if it doesn't make business sense to keep you around. Don't be blindly loyal to an organization that has no loyalty to you. If they can outsource you, your department, or your division for much cheaper than what they're paying you, then you're gonna be gone soon.
4) Remember that you're working for the shareholders, not management. The goal of the shareholders is to get as much money out of the company for what they invested into it. They don't care about you, your career, or your special needs kid.
5) "Business is war". You and your company are allies, nothing more. The company will bribe (*cough* campaign contributions) your politicians to get the company and shareholders a low tax rate. It won't do the same for you.
captcha: dilemma
I generally get about a 1.5-2.5% raise. But inflation is around 4.5% for food, shelter, education & transportation; which is 90% of my expenses (I don't do much leisure activity). I average about a 1.75% paycut every year. That money isn't gone, it's going somewhere. This is where the last 10 years of wealth inequality came from.
I remember a story when one of the old Kmart's closed down. A woman started at $3/hr in the mid 1970s and ended around $9 bucks an hour in 2018. Trouble was, $3/hr inflation adjusted in 1970 had $16/hr in buying power. She lost over 1/3 of her pay after 40 years or work.
Put another way, if minimum wage kept pace with productivity it'd be over $20/hr right now. Then again, 86% of the lost manufacturing jobs were lost to automation, not the Chinese & Mexico...
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You should never measure tax cuts against deficits and debt. That is just a political game that gets played every time and propagandized in the media. They should only be measured against TAX REVENUES. If you cut taxes and overall revenues go up, (because the economy is stimulated and growth drives it) then the tax cut is a benefit to the country as a whole. Just because the politicians decided to spend an extra $500 Billion during the same year that tax revenues only went up by $200 Billion, does not mean the tax cuts causes an extra $300 Billion deficit.
Keep in mind that the tax reform will add about $1,000,000,000,000 to the deficit, so this is money you are borrowing (with interest) from your future self, or more likely your kids.
There are about 125 million households in the USA, so each family owns about $8000 of that deficit. If your refund has increased by >$8000 per year then this reform was made for you.
If your refund is only $4000/year, then you are borrowing $8000 from your kids. Someone richer than you gets $4000 and you get to keep the other $4000.
If you invest that money and end up paying your kids back (with interest) then they should have no reason to resent you. But if you blow that money, then even if you are one of the families who gets >8000/year, that benefit is gained on the back of your kids future.
Wages have been stagnant for a loooong time, so this is old news. Until the early 1970's, wages and productivity grew in lock-step with each other, but then they started to diverge. Productivity kept rising ever upward but wage growth slowed and has been largely flat. For the last ten years, I've been an advocate of having multiple streams of income as way to (A) Not be 100% financially dependent on one's job and (B) Overcome wage stagnation. My job's annual wage increase was usually 3%, which meant I was keeping up with inflation, but not really getting ahead. But since I got into dividend investing 10 years ago, my dividend income has risen at about 10% annually. It doesn't take a genius to see that being an investor is better in the long-term than being an employee.
Even if what you say is true (and I don't agree that it is), the extra $500 billion the politicians decide to spend in your example likely came from the psychology of tax cuts.
In a complex system, you must pay attention to all reactions, not just the ones you choose. You chose to credit the economic burst to the tax cuts but not the spending increases. That makes no sense. Without all of the fuzzy math floating around letting them make the argument that the economic increase will be much greater, the increases wouldn't have happened.
Furthermore, the economics won't last. There are limitations to the economy other than what people spend on taxes. Some of those limitations involve finite things like how many workers we have. If you over-rev the economy up and smash it into those walls, the backlash can put you back further than where you started. But, a lot of wheeler and dealers will walk away richer, so I guess it serves a purpose for someone.
The problem is that with the recent tax cut, the revenues didn't increase nearly enough to offset it. It's nowhere near the levels the Republicans claimed it would rise to when they passed the tax cuts, it's not even to the level that the CBO estimated it would be so this tax cut is likely going to add to the debt even more than the 1.5 TRILLION dollars the Republicans claimed it would. The GDP has grown at similar levels as during the Obama administration and tax revenues have actually gone down on an inflation-adjusted basis. Studies that have looked at the economic impact of the corporate tax cut mostly went to share buybacks, companies didn't use the money to expand or invest, they gave it to their owners. It doesn't seem to have spurred any growth in the economy at all. The result of this tax bill seems to be that the rich got richer and the middle class (and the future middle class) will be paying the price.
Enigma