Oregon workers don’t have much to celebrate this Labor Day weekend, according to a report issued today by the Oregon Center for Public Policy.
“Not surprisingly, for most Oregon workers the state of affairs is a tough one,” the report says. “In particular:
- The wages of a typical Oregon worker last year were lower than in 1979 when adjusted for inflation.
- Income inequality — the gap separating the wealthy from the rest — remains wide, despite drops in income across the wage scale.
- Jobs are expected to remain scarce over the next few years, making it hard for workers to demand better wages.”
The Great Recession has hit workers at the lower end of the wage scale hardest, the OCPP found. Average pay statewide increased 0.6% in 2009, compared with 2.4% in 2008 and 3.9% in 2007. But low- and medium-wage workers – those in the 20th to 50th percentiles – actually have seen their wages fall when adjusted for inflation. They lost from 3.5% to nearly 4% in real terms between 2001 and 2007.
In fact, when wages are adjusted for inflation, those Oregon workers are earning less now than they were 30 years ago: “The average hourly wage for median-wage workers was $15.85 in 2009, down from $16.09 in 2001 and lower than the 1979 level of $16.12.”
Higher-wage workers – those at the 80th percentile – have seen some improvement: Their wages have risen 10.7% since 1979 and 4.9% between 2001 and 2009. The inflation-adjusted average hourly wage for those workers in 2009 was $27.07.
But when you look at incomes instead of just wages, “the picture that emerges of the past 30 years is one of growing income inequality,” the report says. The median income for all Oregon households in 2008 (the latest year for which the figures are available) was 1.5% lower than in 1980, when adjusted for inflation. But over the same period, the average real income for the wealthiest 1% of the state’s households rose by an awesome 138%.
“Even though income dropped for this wealthiest group as a result of the [current] recession, they still maintained gains this decade,” the OCPP said in a press release.
Also, “While most Oregonians continue to feel the effects of the Great Recession, some CEOs of Oregon-based corporations keep making ‘fortunes.’ … [A]verage compensation among the 40 highest-paid CEOs of Oregon-based public companies in 2009 was $1.9 million – nearly 40 times the average annual earnings of Oregon workers generally.”
The one “bright spot” that the OCPP could find in the picture, such as it is, is that despite the recession – or maybe because of it – a higher percentage of Oregon workers belong to unions now.
“Union members made up 17.0% of Oregon’s workforce in 2009, higher than the low-point of 13.8% in 2006 and the highest figure seen since 1997,” the press release said. “Unions substantially boost wages and benefits for workers they represent, especially for low-wage workers. … For example, data for 2003-07 show that the typical worker in Oregon got a 16.5% wage boost by being in a union, while the lowest-paid [union] workers saw a wage gain of 21.1%.”
According to the release, OCPP Executive Director Chuck Sheketoff “said that the change is related in part to the loss of [non-union] jobs in the recession, but that membership growth may also be related to unions’ success in reaching out to workers in new industries.”
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2010.
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HBM, it was refreshing to see you use quotes around the “bright spot” comment. No doubt union jobs have grown and the only real growth sector in union jobs are government union jobs. These are jobs that unlike private sector jobs, don’t depend upon the underlying financial health of the “company”.
In this case the “company” is you and me and the taxes we pay. Federal stimulus dollars temporarily shored up state and local government union jobs and Federal union jobs can be created as long as it has the ability to print money.
So what happened to all these “shovel ready” jobs that were promised? Where are they? Seems to me the only ones with shovels are the independents and conservatives who will be shoveling out the dems in a couple of months. Government does not create wealth nor can it be expected to create the kind of sustainable jobs needed by our economy.
I have nothing against anyone working for the government, but unfortunately there will likely be a day of reckoning. Just look to our neighbors to the south in CA.
Not a big fan of unions myself, I would hazard a guess that the reason for the percentage growth of unions in the workforce is the layoffs of the non-union workers–those at-will employees that make up the vast majority of the workforce. Even if the number of unionized government workers didn’t increase, initial cutbacks are always first and deepest in the private sector.
Bruce opens the door and…here comes all the anti-union right wingers, as predictable as the setting of the sun. “Oh if only we were back to the days of slavery, when businessmen could handle employees however they pleased!” “Oh these blasted minimum wage laws, I want to pay the peons whatever I feel like paying them!” “Oh if only the retirement age was 70, we could be certain the peasants would die at their work stations!”
We would NOT HAVE NEEDED to have unions in the first place, nor payroll taxes, minimum wage laws, worker protection laws, government inspections and regulations, retirement ages, social security, employer-provided health insurance and so on and so forth…
BUT the Great And Powerful Business Leaders Of America saw fit, in the first place, to work people six days a week, 80 hours a week, pay them as little as possible, have child labor, have unsafe working conditions…and so on and so forth…
I think it would be cool if employers and employees had equal say-so in the running of a business, and equal share in the profits and failures. Co-ops, I think that’s called. But that probably sounds like communism to the Republicans, so never mind.
But that would make the most sense. It’s stuck in everybody’s head that EMPLOYERS are great benevolent forces because they give EMPLOYEES a job. But EMPLOYEES give their time and labor, which is really when you think about it worth the same weight in gold. Right now the common way of thinking clouded through our collective minds by the Republican party is that EMPLOYEES are just a bunch of leeches.
“Oh if only the retirement age was 70, we could be certain the peasants would die at their work stations!”
Hate to break the news to you Cliffy, oh Bastion of intellect, but when Social Security was first established, hardly any worker lived long enough to receive any government benefits either.
Read the Saturday WSJ. To paraphrase: Isn’t it ashame that we have been divided into two kinds of workers, the private sector and the public sector. The private sector worker (union or not) bears the risk of the business cycle without much protection while the government worker lives a “cushioned” existence where terminations take years, pensions are guaranteed and recessions are “only a thunder in the distance.” But it is the private sector worker who will pay for public-sector comfort with ever higher taxes.
Again, look what happens when critical mass is reached as in CA where, through no fault of their own, thousands of union government workers are being laid off because the private sector can not be taxed enough to sustain them.
It used to be that in exchange for larger benefits, earlier retirement, and good/safe pensions, goverment workers accepted lower direct compensation than their private sector counterparts.
But that has changed now through the efforts of the government unions. But just as the UAW’s victories now ring hollow to their largely jobless membership (mostly as the result of spineless management), so do the gains of AFSME and SEIU ring hollow to their jobless CA bretheren.
“Hate to break the news to you Cliffy, oh Bastion of intellect, but when Social Security was first established, hardly any worker lived long enough to receive any government benefits either. when Social Security was first established, hardly any worker lived long enough to receive any government benefits either.”
This is a common misconception.
The AVERAGE life expectancy was substantially lower in the 1930s, yes, but the average is misleading. It was pulled down by high infant mortality and the toll taken by childhood diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough and scarlet fever and infectious diseases. The advent of antibiotics and vaccinations for once-deadly childhood diseases pushed the average way up.
What’s important to look at is how many years a person could expect to live after retirement. As this table (http://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html) shows, in 1940 the average American male who reached age 65 could expect to live 12.7 more years, and the average female who reached the same age could expect to live 14.7 more years. By 1990 the figures had gone up only to 15.3 years for men and 19.6 for women — not a huge difference.
HBM, I think you missed ‘ol Cliff’s point. His hyper-ventilated rant referred to his perception that in their endless greed to save a dime, business owners would, if they could, move the pension goal posts so that workers die before qualifying. My point is that is exactly what our government did when social security was first established and retirement age set at 65.
HBM: “What’s important to look at is how many years a person could expect to live after retirement.”
Well I’m no actuary but it seems to me that is only part of the equation (and a less significant one at that given a growing population). The major function of cost is the number of people that will actually reach 65. The SSA tables (Table 10) show that males reaching age 30 in 1934 could expect to live another 37 years; males reaching age 30 in 1990 could expect to live another 44 years and males reaching age 30 today can expect to live another 47 years, almost a 30% increase.
I return to my original point, intended without any malice to those working in government jobs, that when costs eventually stretch beyond the means for the private sector to be taxed, disruption results and good people lose their jobs. One only needs to look to CA for the number of teachers and other governemnt workers fired and the riots in Greece where government pensions (i.e. social security) has been slashed by 30%.
Everything’s good. Chris Dudley, that man of the people attended the Union sponsored Labor Day picnic here in Bend yesterday. What more can any red-blooded working man and woman hope for from an inexperienced millionaire running for the most important office in Oregon? Nice to know our future governor is there for us.