Posts in this category analyse trends in labour costs published by various statistical agencies

Australia minimum wage rises but the Fair Work Commission still did not preserve real value as they claim

I am back at about 70 per cent but improving. This morning was good news although it should have been better. Australia’s minimum wage setting authority – the Fair Work Commission (FWC) – increased the federal minimum wage by 5.2 per cent or $A40 a week to $A812.60. In their decision – – Annual Wage Review 2021-22 – the FWC sought to protect the real living standards of the lowest-paid workers in the nation after receiving a ‘direction’ from the new Federal Labor Government to do so. They failed. Real wages for low-paid workers will still fall over the next 12 months, just not by as much as they would have had not the Federal government intervened and supported a 5.1 per cent rise (which was the March-quarter inflation rate). So good but should have been better. The major employer groups argued for variously very low nominal rises, while at the same, they enjoying booming profits and rising productivity growth. A scandalous indictment of our system.

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US labour market weakens a little – it is madness to be increasing interest rates in this environment

Last Friday (June 3, 2022), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – May 2022 – which reported a total payroll employment rise of only 390,000 jobs and an official unemployment rate of 3.6 per cent. The US labour market is still 822 thousand payroll jobs short from where it was at the end of May 2020, which helps to explain why there are no wage pressures emerging. Real wages continued to decline as the supply disruptions and the greed of increased corporate profit margin push sustain the inflationary pressures. Any analyst who is claiming the US economy is close to full employment hasn’t looked at the data. It is madness to be increasing interest rates in this environment.

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US Federal Reserve Bank economists going Marxist on us

It only took about 6 decades or so. And, in between, there has been denial, fiction, and diversions. But here we are 2022 and work that was explicit in the 1960s is now being recognised by the central bank of the largest economy. In fact, the foundations of this new acceptance goes back to the C19th and was developed by you know who – K. Marx. Then a socialist in the 1940s wrote a path breaking article further building the foundations. And then a group of Marxist economists brought the ideas together as a coherent theory of inflation early 1970s as a counter to the growing Monetarist fiction that inflationary pressures were ultimately the product of irresponsible government policy designed to reduce unemployment below some ‘natural rate’. I am referring here to a Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) working paper – Who Killed the Phillips Curve? A Murder Mystery – published on May 20, 2022 by the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve System. I suppose it is progress but along the way – over those 6 decades – there have been a lot of casualties of the fiction central banks created in denial of these findings.

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Australian wages growth remains flat despite RBA claims that a breakout is about to occur

On May 4, 2022, the RBA increased interest rates claiming they had evidence of accelerating wages growth. For the last few years, the RBA had been signalling that they would not move on interest rates until there was a concerted increase in wages growth, which has been at record low levels for some years now. Well, today, we found out the RBA was poorly informed because the latest wages data shows that wages growth has been flat in each of the last three quarters. The is no acceleration. Wages growth is not driving the inflation trajectory. Workers are enduring massive real wage cuts and the RBA has made that worse by pushing up mortgage rates for those exposed. Today (May 18, 2022), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Wage Price Index, Australia – for the March-quarter 2021. The WPI data shows that nominal wages growth was 2.4 over the 12 months. Private sector wages growth has remained at low levels. The last time wages growth was higher was in the December-quarter 2014. While the conservatives are railing about inflation now and looking to target workers’ wages (further cuts), the evidence is that the wages side is not driving any inflationary pressures – the opposite is the case. The business sector, as a whole, thinks it is clever to always oppose wages growth and the banks love that because they can foist more debt onto households to maintain their consumption expenditure. But the reality is clear – there can be no sustained recovery for the economy post Covid without significant increases in the current rate of wages growth.

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With corporate profits booming, business can afford to pay higher wages

Last week, I provided a graph in this blog post – The Left/Right distinction is as relevant as ever as corporations gouge profits out of pushing inflation (May 2, 2022) – which showed negotiated wages growth in Europe was declining and real negotiated wages had fallen sharply over the last several months. I am continually on the lookout for evidence that the current inflationary episode, no matter how alarming, is not being driven by structural forces in the labour market even though unemployment rates have fallen somewhat. A music segment follows.

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The Left/Right distinction is as relevant as ever as corporations gouge profits out of pushing inflation

Apparently, the Left/Right Paradigm is dead. This narrative keeps coming back. In the 1980s, when governments, coopted by corporate lobby groups, went on a privatisation spree, which transferred billions of dollars worth of public assets into the hands of private wealth holders, and enriched lawyers, management consultants etc into the bargain, we were told that we are all capitalists now because our pension funds bought the assets. Joke. Anyway, I keep reading and being told that there is no longer any meaningful distinction between Left and Right, with both falling into the hands of totalitarian discourse. Even so-called progressives advocate that the traditional Left should partner up with the traditional Right (and far Right) to keep ‘centrists’ out of power or to stop governments taking basic actions to protect public health. It is the ultimate victory for the neoliberals to have persuaded the Left that they have more in common with the Right than ever before. This is another example of how duped the Left has become.

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Deliberately creating mass unemployment now would be the work of vandals and New Keynesians

Last week, the New York Times published the latest Paul Krugman article on inflation (which is behind its paywall). It is syndicated elsewhere and you can access it here at The Berkshire Eagle (April 13, 2022) – Paul Krugman: Inflation is about to come down – but don’t get too excited. I wondered whether the author had offered his services cheaper to the NYTs and elsewhere given his concern for inflation, and, apparently, his assertion that wages are a critical factor in sustaining it. What this article highlights is mainstream New Keynesian macroeconomics – the dominant paradigm in our teaching, research and policy circles. What it also highlights is how different the mainstream is to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), despite characters like Krugman and his fellow New Keynesians trying to tell the world that there is nothing particularly different about MMT and the way they do economics. It also provides another chance for me to add nuance to the Job Guarantee.

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We are not going back to the 1970s

With Russia now invading Ukraine and adding to the already highly disrupted supply chains linking products and nations, and the price fixers in OPEC and OPEC+ having a picnic on the uncertainty, inflationary pressures will continue to rise for the time being. Many commentators keep falling into the trap of saying that history is repeating itself – meaning that it is the 1970s over again. I maintain my position that this is not akin to what was going on in the 1970s although there are similarities – energy price rises accompanying war, etc. And if we make the same mistakes that were made in the 1970s now, then not only will the inflation persist but millions of workers will lose their jobs and their incomes.

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Australia – workers endure on-going real wage cuts as corporate profits soar

Yesterday (February 23, 2022), the ABS released the latest – Wage Price Index, Australia – for the December-quarter 2021. The WPI data shows that nominal wages growth remained modest to say the least. The data shows that the significant cuts to workers’ purchasing power continue, and, in my view, constitute a national emergency. While the conservatives are railing about inflation now and looking to target workers’ wages (further cuts), the evidence is that the wages side is not driving any inflationary pressures – the opposite is the case. The business sector, as a whole, thinks it is clever to always oppose wages growth and the banks love that because they can foist more debt onto households to maintain their consumption expenditure. But the reality is clear – there can be no sustained recovery for the economy post Covid without significant increases in the current rate of wages growth.

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Workers in UK enduring real wage cuts except the unproductive bankers

It is Wednesday and I have three live presentations to make throughout the day. So we will be brief today. The ABS released the latest Wage Price Index today which shows that annual wages growth in Australia was 2.3 per cent, compared to the official inflation rate of 3.5 per cent. I will analyse that data in detail tomorrow, given I am short of time today. But there was also disturbing data coming out of the UK last week on the wages front, which reflects a major imbalance in priorities and also tells me that there is no wage demands driving the current inflationary episode.

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