Re: US immiseration
On Mar 7, 2007, at 2:56 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
Doug says my comparison of 1975 with 2007 is unfair because 1975 was the low point of a recession. But it was he
who introduced 1973 as the high point of working class purchasing
power. If you could tell me what was the low point of the recession in the ’00s then perhaps I could make a fairer comparison.
I introduced 1973 as the peak of real hourly earnings because it was!
July, to be precise, $19.03/hr in today’s dollars. Last month, the
average U.S. worker earned $17.09/hr. By the way, the peak real value
of the minimum wage in today’s dollars was Feb 68, $9.49. It’s now
$5.15.
In the early 1970s expansion, the unemployment rate reached a low of
4.6% in October 1973. Last month it was…4.6%. It never got very
high in the most recent recession, but it did hit 7.7% in June 1992.
Of course, a lot depends on what you want to use as a point of
comparison. The unemployment rate was high in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, so the late 1990s through today look good. But the
unemployment rate stayed below 4% for every month but one between
1966 and 1969. Decade averages:
1950s 4.5% 1960s 4.8 1970s 6.2 1980s 7.3 1990s 5.7 2000s 5.1