As we sink into the La-Z-Boy recliner, watch the cable TV news about Hurricane Gustav, pop open another beer and pat our fat, comfortable bellies, it is appropriate to pause and consider the condition of the working man and woman in Virginia and the United States on this Labor Day.
We’ve heard a lot of speeches and commentary in recent days about the miserable condition of the laboring class in the United States. The multimillionaires may be prospering, but everyone else is mired in wage stagnation, home foreclosures and credit card debt. The last eight years have been a disaster. The country is crying out for change.
Carmudgeon that I am, I decided to check the facts. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ searchable database only has data through 2006, so I gathered the data from 2001 (the bursting of the Internet bubble) to 2006 for wages and salaries. Note that I focused on wages and salaries because I wanted to exclude the income from interest, dividends, capital gains and other sources of revenue that mainly benefit the plutocracy. I also didn’t want to focus on “per capital income,” my usual favorite metric, because of the need to make adjustments for evolving family size, labor force participation and so on. The numbers I’m provide are plain, old wages and salaries for everyday working Joes and Janes.
The rate of inflation over that five-year period was 13.8 percent. The average wage/salary gain for all Americans was 18.0 percent — thus, Americans enjoyed an inflation-adjusted gain of 4.2 percent in wages and salaries. That’s hardly a breathtaking breakthrough in prosperity, but it does contradict the picture of members of the working classes getting their noses ground into the dirt.
Virginia fared somewhat better than the nation as a whole — wages/salaries gained 21.3 percent. That was good enough to rank it the 11th top performing state in the country.
Hampton Roads led the way, rebounding vigorously from its wage stagnation in the 1990s. It was followed by the Charlottesville, Washington and Blacksburg-Christiansburg MSAs. Here are the numbers:
Hampton Roads…24.2%
Charlottesville… 22.6%
Washington… 21.7%
All Virginia metropolitan areas… 21.3%
Blacksburg-Christiansburg… 20.8%
Richmond… 20.2%
All Virginia non-metro areas…17.4%
Bristol-Kingsport… 17.0%
Roanoke… 16.6%
Lynchburg… 16.1%
Harrisonburg… 15.7%
Danville… 13.8%
Poor Danville brought up the rear, but Danville residents can take on small morcel of satisfaction: They performed better than the state of Michigan, which saw wages/salaries increase only 13.1%.
So, Virginians, celebrate this day. Despite what you hear, life is actually OK.
Update: In his Labor Day post on “Growls,” Tim Wise emphasized that American workers not only are making more money but are enjoying more leisure time and spending more of their income on recreation. Since the mid-’60s, the typical worker spend 8 fewer hours per week working, and has increased the percentage of personal expenditures devoted to recreation from 6.6 percent in 1970 to 8.7 percent in 2005.