Unintended Consequence of Austerity America - Union Rep Share Grew in Private Sector

Reacting to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on union membership, EPI President Lawrence Mishel said:

New data for 2013 on the number and share of workers with union coverage show some interesting trends. Private sector union coverage increased but was offset by an erosion in the public sector, leaving overall union coverage essentially unchanged (a decline of less than 0.1 percent, so rounding up becomes a 0.1 percent decline).  The increase in private sector collective bargaining coverage in 2013 is noteworthy because it happened in 2007 and 2008 but otherwise hasn’t happened since 1979. This was driven by increased union employment in manufacturing and construction, where more than thirty-five percent of net new jobs were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Union coverage has increased in some states that may be unexpected. For instance, private sector union coverage increased in each of the last two years in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Improvements in the private sector have been offset, however, by erosion in the public sector. Between 2012 and 2013 union coverage in the public sector fell from 39.6 to 38.7 percent. The starkest change was in Wisconsin, where union coverage in the public sector fell from 53.4 percent in 2011 to just 37.6 percent in 2013. This suggests that the erosion of public sector union coverage reflects the new anti-collective bargaining policies implemented in several states.

See here.

***It is important to note that much of the growth is due to the offset of job loss in the public sector as a result of austerity along with, as mentioned above, the implementation of anti-collective bargaining policies...so-called "right to work" laws...***

The Madness of Austerity in One Chart

From Mother Jones

January's job numbers were fairly dismal, but the bad cheer wasn't equally spread. Private sector employment, as usual, increased—by 142,000 jobs last month. At the same time, public sector employment declined. Government employment at all levels was down 29,000 in January.Aside from the brief census blip in early 2010, this has been the usual state of affairs for the past four years, ever since the recession officially ended. The chart below shows public and private sector employment indexed to 100 at the end of the recession. Private sector employment is up 6.8 percent. Public sector employment is down 3.4 percent. And that's during a period when population grew 2.3 percent. On a per capita basis, government employment has declined more than 5 percent since 2009, and it's still declining.This is the price of austerity. If public sector employment had been growing normally during this period, we'd have about a million more jobs than we do now and the unemployment rate would probably be below 6 percent. We are our own worst enemies.

See more here.

Austerity Sucks: Another Drag on the Post-Recession Economy Is Public-Sector Wages

By Monique Morrissey

The aftermath of the Great Recession has led to outright wage declines for the vast majority of American workers in recent years, resulting in a full decade of essentially stagnant wages. Though you might expect public-sector wages to have weathered the recession and its aftermath better than private-sector wages, the opposite appears true: While the decline in real public-sector wages started later, it was steeper and ultimately more damaging. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index, public-sector wages have fallen by about 1.3 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 2007, where private-sector wages have been essentially flat (an increase of 0.3 percent). Unlike in previous recoveries, state and local government austerity has been a major drag on job growth and the broader economy. The number of public-sector jobs fell by almost 3 percent in the three years following the recession, while the number of private-sector jobs grew (albeit anemically). The fact that public-sector wages have lagged behind those in the private-sector exacerbates government’s drag on the economy.

Read rest here.