Quote:
Originally Posted by ba1025
Is it a coincidence that the slide of total compensation that started around 1970 also coincided with the decline in Union Membership.
It's easy to say we dont need unions but....the rise in wages in the USA coincided with a rise in Union membership. The decline in total compensation coincided with the decline in Union membership. You can postulate all the reasons you want but...the GNP of this country has risen during the decline in wages. If you have to continually call these trends coincidence maybe they aren't
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Real wages and benefits (total compensation) have both increased despite the decline in union membership.
Your conflating terminology/statistics as you are presumably quoting labor's
share of compensation.
A quick question follows:
Statistics
Union membership was approximately 28% in 1964 (vs. 24% in 1970 and 12% in 2006). Labor's share of compensation was 68.2% in 1964 (an expansion year) vs. 72.4% in 1970 (a recession year). So between 1964 and 1970, union membership declined by 4 percentage points, and yet labor's share increased by 4 percentage points. Furthermore, labor's share was higher in 1974 (a recession year), 1979-80 (1980 was a recession year) and 2001 (a recession year). Throughout this entire time period, labor declined at a steady rate (approximately 0.3 percentage points a year).
Question
If the decline in the rate of union membership supposedly causes a decline in labor's share of total compensation, then why do we see four years with a higher labor share of national income (with three of those years being recession years)? How do you explain that?