Recovery is still missing for workers

[swag]

From Steve Roach this morning:

http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20050711-mon.html

"Over the entire 43 months of this economic recovery, private nonfarm payrolls have increased only 2% -- far short of the 11.5% increase recorded, on average, over comparable periods of the preceding five business cycles. At the same time, the hourly wage rate held at its 2.7% y-o-y trajectory -- slightly less than the CPI-based inflation rate and fractionally below the level recorded at the trough of the last recession in November 2001. This does little to correct the serious and highly unusual mismatch between vigorous productivity growth and persistently weak trends in worker rewards. According to our estimates, total hourly compensation in the nonfarm business sector increased only 7.5% in real terms in the first 13 quarters of this recovery (ending 1Q05) -- far short of the 13.0% cumulative gain in productivity over this same interval (see my 7 July dispatch, “Back to the Drawing Board”). Contrary to the post-release spin on the June employment report, the vulnerabilities of the income- and saving-short, wealth- and debt-dependent American consumer remain very much intact."

[Robert Oak]

1. Rich get richer, poor poorer

Offshore outsourcing, "insourcing" through the use of the US Visa system, insane trade agreements designed by and for multinational corporations...

what a surprise.

The only good news is that Morgan Stanley realizes no US middle class,
no strong economy.


Please write your house representatives to vote NO on CAFTA, yet
another outsourcing agreement, with the DOL itself having studies
showing how it's bad for workers across all of the nations involved.