More evidence of today's concentration of wealth

Title: When do workers get their share?
Source: Economic Policy Institute
Date: May 27, 2004

Need proof that the concentration of wealth is accelerating right now? These three articles show the trend.

1) When do workers get their share?

From the article:

Despite recent good news on employment growth, the current economic recovery, now approaching its third year, remains the most unbalanced on record in respect to the distribution of income gains between corporate profits and labor compensation. Essentially, rapid gains in productivity have been translating into higher corporate profits without increasing the wage and salary income of American workers.

In other words, all of the money from productivity increases is flowing to executives and shareholders. The article has a very nice graph showing how lopsided things are becoming.

2) Wealth Gap Expands In Connecticut

From the article:

Per capita income in the state's eight wealthiest towns, all in Fairfield County, increased 31.3 percent in the 10-year period, besting the state average of 11.1 percent.

The urban poor, meanwhile, saw their per capita income grow only 2.1 percent in the same period.

See also Harvard and the concentration of wealth.

3) Why 1.4 million new jobs haven't ended the jobless recovery

From the article:

Consider the employment–to-population ratio, a broad gauge that measures the percentage of Americans over the age of 16 who have a job. (Data is available going back to 1948. To see the history, go here and click on the box that reads "Civilian-Employment Population Ratio" and then "retrieve data.") The ratio rose steadily in the 1990s, from 61.4 percent in January 1993 to 64.7 in the spring of 2000. In January 2001, it stood at 64.4 percent, very close to an all-time high. Since then, it has deteriorated steadily, even after the recession ended in November 2001. In May 2004, it stood at 62.2 percent, more than 2 percentage points below the rate of January 2001. Two percent may not sound like much. But we're working with very large numbers. The population is greater than 293 million, as the Census Bureau estimates today. If 64.4 percent of Americans had jobs today, as they did in January 2001, there would be nearly 4.8 million more Americans employed.

The article concludes:

Something has plainly broken down in the American job creation machine. The supply of new jobs has been nowhere near sufficient to keep up with the supply of new workers—not for the past three years and not for the past 10 months. I don't claim to have a good explanation. Productivity growth, globalization, outsourcing, and widespread excess capacity probably have something to do with it.

Instead of spreading out, in the form of new jobs and higher wages, the wealth is concentrating. See Robotic Freedom for details.