How the Recession Reshaped the Economy, in 255 Charts (2014)

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/05/upshot/how-the-recession-reshaped-the-economy-in-255-charts.html

by Kortaggio • 11 years ago

29 25 11 years ago

smackay• 11 years ago

A very interesting set of graphs but it takes quite a bit of time to digest the information presented. The most interesting part, which is not immediately obvious until you start checking the graphs individually is how little wages have grown over the past 10 years. Even in booming sectors such as pet grooming, etc. today will will be earning essentially the same wage as you were 9 years ago.

The growth in (mostly) all-things related to software is not much of a surprise, though that old gas related activity was the only other bright spot in the economy (more jobs, higher wages) was. However, even in software, average wages are increasing, but not by a lot. Obviously the average wage is probably not that informative but perhaps it does point to a fundamental limit in human productivity that will only be overcome with better tools and techniques.

larzang2• 11 years ago

Wage stagnation isn't just the last decade, it stretches back 40 years, and it has nothing to do with limits in productivity.

In inflation adjusted terms, worker productivity has increased almost 75% between 1973 and 2013, while compensation for production workers has increased less than 10%. Wages at the top 1% have grown 138% since 1979 compared to 15% for the bottom 90%, and it gets direr if you start looking at the bottom 50% (stagnant) or bottom 10% (5% decrease) instead.

Our economy is producing more and more, we are far from hitting any kind of limits on productivity, but it's only enriching a select few while the vast majority deal with flat income and ever-rising cost of living.

http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

twoodfin• 11 years ago

Do you think today's median worker would take a 20% (adjusted dollars) pay hike in exchange for having to live in 1973's economy? I don't think so (I wouldn't do it for 100%!), which suggests your statistics are painting an incomplete picture.

Cost of living goes up when there's more desirable stuff to live on, not just bare monetary inflation. And wages aren't equal to income. Also, demographics! Many more workers, including more per household and more newer to these shores.

rory0962• 11 years ago

Just gonna rip this straight from an /r/Economics comment yesterday:

Using wages as a picture welfare is unproductively restrictive. Using total compensation yields a very different picture.(http://i.imgur.com/nCCCuSC.png) Real compensation accounts for all forms of income paid to employees, including health care costs and defined contribution plans. Additionally, the CPI overstates inflation, and changing household dynamics/other forms of income (https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where...) have substantive implications for any picture of overall income growth. Context matters for how we should view these trends.(http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-re...)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/3by8tb/elizabeth...

tormeh• 11 years ago

Very interesting. It seems recessions always accelerate economic shifts. Any similar articles about Europe?

danbruc• 11 years ago

I can not see much economic shift - in the majority of the cases the trends pre and post crisis are pretty much the same, they just experienced a dent. A few show trend changes but this is of course expected when you look at that many time series.

danteembermage• 11 years ago

What happened to HR professionals? That was a devastating decline in an otherwise stable sector.

nmrm25• 11 years ago

If you're looking to shed weight ASAP without undercutting the future of the organization, HR is an easy target. Maybe not wise, but you can understand how executives could come to the decision to cut HR before Engineering, for example.

Also, I'd imagine at least some of the decline is for the same reason we've seen decline in lots of other sectors -- HR processes are some of the easier ones to automate (no robotics, often tasks are fairly well defined)

How the Recession Reshaped the Economy, in 255 Charts (2014)

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