Once a Year Speeches Do Not Mean Support for Workers

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Today is Monday, September 5, 2011. Since it is the first Monday of September, it is the national holiday known as Labor Day. Supposedly, it is the day when our politicians and pundits proclaim their unrelenting love for all things worker related - even as they spend the other 364 days a year doing all in their power to destroy the lives of workers by cutting salaries, limiting benefits. Just today, the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson had a column decrying the state of labor in the US:

On this Labor Day, there is little good news about labor. We have entered a long period of crushing unemployment and downward pressure on wages that may well transform the nation’s economic and political landscape. There was no job growth in August, and the overall numbers are stupefying: 14 million unemployed; nearly 9 million part-time workers wanting full-time jobs; 6.5 million who want jobs but have given up looking and are, therefore, not counted in the official labor force. People are only gradually recognizing the magnitude of the problem.

...snip...

It’s not only the jobless who will be affected. No one has yet repealed the law of supply and demand. At last count, there were 4.5 unemployed workers for every job opening. Bargaining power has shifted from labor to capital. Sure, some workers will get promotions and seniority raises. Otherwise, gains will be slim. Since September 2008, annual wage and salary increases have averaged 1.6 percent, the slowest pace in 30 years, reports EPI’s Lawrence Mishel.

...snip...

Still, the harshest effects of joblessness fall on the jobless. “We’re creating a bifurcated society,” worries Harvard economist Lawrence Katz. “We’re talking about a lost generation of younger workers and displaced workers.” Younger workers have a harder time starting careers. Because many skills are developed on the job, long unemployment spells can lower lifetime earnings. The same is true of older workers. Even when those who lose stable jobs get new work, they often suffer a 20 percent earnings loss for 15 years or more, reports economist Till von Wachter of Columbia University.

Jobs, Salaries, Careers

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I'm thinking this must be the week for education related news stories. Sunday, I wrote this post on how Education issues were being spun in the TradMed. Today, there are a few articles related to how an undergrad major reflects earnings. The first I saw was this one from the AP (via MSNBC) then saw that the Washington Post also had coverage:

Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business are as much as 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who major in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology, according to an analysis by researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

“I don’t want to slight Shakespeare,” said Anthony Carnevale, one of the report’s authors. “But this study slights Shakespeare.”

The report is based on previously unreported census data that definitively links college majors to career earnings. Earlier studies have looked at salaries immediately after graduation, but the new report covers earnings across a person’s working life and is based on a much larger survey.

Bloomberg's article on the study though offers a little bit more perspective:

As a group, engineering majors of all disciplines reported the highest median earnings at $75,000, the study showed. The lowest pay, at $42,000, came from two groups -- education and psychology and social work, which includes such categories as clinical psychology and communications disorders.

...snip...

Race and gender play a role in salary, according to the report. African-Americans who graduated with finance majors earned an average of $47,000 per year, less than Hispanics and Asians at $56,000 and whites at $70,000, it showed.

While women hold the majority of degrees in many lower- paying fields, even those with specialties that command the highest pay, such as chemical engineering, earned $20,000 less per year on average than men with the same education, according to the study.

...snip...

About 41 percent of undergraduates with humanities and liberal arts majors -- including history, English language and literature and foreign languages -- went on to earn a graduate degree, the study showed.

Unions, Public or Private, Are Not the Problem

Over the last couple of months, we've seen an unprecedented attack on public sector unions across the nation. According to this article from the LA Times via the Sacramento Bee, nearly half of the states are in varying stages of attacking public and private sector unions.

Nearly half of the states are considering legislation to limit public employees' collective bargaining rights. In New Hampshire, the House last week approved a measure that one union leader assailed as "Wisconsin on steroids."

But it's not just budgetary concerns driving Republican officeholders to take on unions, traditionally a strong Democratic ally.

In Maine, the newly elected Republican governor ordered the removal of a mural depicting the state's labor history from a state building because, his spokeswoman said, it portrayed a one-sided message supporting organized labor.

A number of states are considering bills that would limit unions' ability to collect dues from public employees. The Florida House approved a bill to ban dues deductions from government paychecks and require unions to obtain members' permission before using dues for political activity. Similar legislation is under consideration in Kansas. Other bills would eliminate a requirement that workers covered by union contracts pay union dues or fees.

February Jobs Reports Coming Out

Since today (Wednesday March 2) is the first Wednesday of the new month, Automatic Data Processing (ADP) has released their monthly report estimating the new jobs for February for the private sector. As always, the economists were surprised. From Reuters:

(Reuters) - Private sector employers added more jobs than expected last month in a sign of steady improvement in the labor market, ahead of the closely watched non-farm payrolls report from the Labor Department on Friday.

Employers added 217,000 jobs in February, the ADP Employer Services report showed on Wednesday, above expectations for a rise of 175,000. January's figure was revised higher by 2,000 to 189,000.

Economists said the private-sector hiring indicates improvement in the labor market, though they noted the month-to-month changes in ADP's report are not always good predictors of Friday's larger jobs numbers.

There is a quite simple explanation for why the month-to-month changes in the ADP report do not predict the larger report from the DoL Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS reporting includes jobs from all levels including the public sector which has been laying people off even as the pace of hiring has picked up a bit in the private sector.

Of course, even as there was some new hiring in February, layoffs also continued with Reuters also reporting this morning on a report from consultants Challenger Gray & Christmas on an increase in February of the numbers of planned layoffs:

(Reuters) - The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms rose in February to its highest level in 11 months as government and non-profit employers let workers go, a report showed on Wednesday.

Employers announced 50,702 planned job cuts last month, the highest level since March 2010 and a jump of 32 percent from January's 38,519, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Layoffs were 20 percent higher than the 42,090 announced in February of last year, marking the first year-over-year increase since May 2009.

Teachers Are Not the Enemy

Let me say this once again with emphasis - TEACHERS ARE NOT THE ENEMY!.

Yet, everywhere we turn, it seems teachers are the sole source of all the evils and troubles affecting school districts all over the US. And it really makes little difference what the political leanings are of the folks blaming the teachers as it is a seeming article of faith on both sides of the political aisle.

Pardon me, however, if I take the time to point a few things out to folks.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post "Let's Play With Some Numbers Once Again (Teachers Style)" where I used this site to draw some figures for Wisconsin teaching salaries (it looks like it is through 2008). Using the same chart and some basic arithmetic and division (which I learned thanks to some good teachers pounding it into my thick skull), the average starting salary for new teachers across the fifty states is $30,950 with a high of $39,259 for Connecticut and a low of $24,872 in North Dakota. An average of the fifty state average teacher salaries is $46,227 with a high average being California of $59,825 and a low average of $34,709 in South Dakota. You might notice that both California with their highest average salary of the fifty states is also a high cost of living state (as is Connecticut which has the highest starting salary and the second highest average overall).

Now what do the states and their citizens in the individual school systems receive for these salaries? Well, outside of Detroit, where it looks like the teachers are going to be primed to become mainly baby sitters with class sizes up to 60 students per class, teachers are supposed to guide students to prepare for all that life has to offer, even when they are constrained about some of the things life offers as "inappropriate for young minds." Teachers teach the "3 Rs of Readin,' 'ritin', and 'rithmetic" (has anyone ever wondered about the Epic Fail of that phrase?) while making sure the students are prepared for and pass all the various state level achievement tests that have been brought around by "No Child Left Behind" yet doing so with increasingly larger classes and less funding?

Let's Play With Some Numbers Once Again (Teachers style)

Back in December, I wrote a post "Let's Play With Some Numbers" based upon a mythical minimum wage worker and what that means in the line of taxes versus expenses. Today, I'd like to offer a similar "what if" based on teacher salaries.

Why you may ask?

Well, mainly because of some of the "ZOMG! Teachers get paid! And they receive benefits" gibberish I've seen the last few days concerning the "budget busting unions" and the "highly compensated teachers" of Wisconsin. As a side note, why are the anti-teachers people so adamant on tearing down the teachers and other public sector workers and their benefits? Shouldn't we be trying to raise things up so that folks in the private sector are once again getting reasonable pay and benefits rather than tearing people down to a lower level? Whatever happened to the desire to see folks from all walks celebrated for their work and paid a living wage?

My reference data is from this state-by-state starting salary for teachers, average, and 10 year percentage increase (looks to be from 2008). This site offers median salaries for various grade levels of teachers but I offer it only for further discussion and will use mainly the first link.

My mythical teacher is going to be a graduate of Wisconsin Stevens Point. This person will be a Wisconsin resident so will receive instate tuition. We'll pretend that our mythical teacher lived in a dorm for all four years (though I'd guess most juniors and seniors manage to find off campus housing with all of its attendant costs) and used the meal card. So our mythical student has costs of $6,304 per semester (rounding down), $12,608 a year and a minimum four year cost of $50,432. I'll pretend this student worked and got some help from Mom and Dad and maybe a small scholarship or two but still needed loans for say $30K. I'm sure there are students who financed the whole amount as well as students who had full parental support to students who managed full time jobs as well as full time student loads.

So here we have our mythical Wisconsin Stevens Point graduate starting a career as a teacher with $30K debt and a starting salary of $25,222. We'll assume our new teacher is getting paid twice a month for nine months so will have a pre-tax bi-weekly income of $1,401 (payday on the 15th and the end of the month). Taxes and such will probably pull that down to roughly $1K take home so we'll say $2K per month. We'll put our new teacher in a one bedroom apartment at $400 per month plus utilities which will average another $400 (gas, electric, heat and air conditioning, phone, and cable). I don't know what the loan periods are for student loans now so we'll pretend the loan period for the $30K debt is ten years and with interest our mythical teacher will pay back $45K. This works out to be $375 per month for ten years. And yes, that's for those months when our teacher is not working in the summer. At this point, our teacher has $1,175 of $2K per month for nine months committed without buying any food, clothing, car payments, insurance payments, school supplies or savings to cover the three months with no salary.