Thursday, September 13, 2012

EPI's The State of Working America 2012

The last edition of the Economic Policy Institute State of Working America is out. A lot of data and more importantly serious and rigorous analysis. Here just want graph, which shows the relation between unemployment and changes in median wages from 1991 to 2011.

As you can see real wages are pro-cyclical, going up in a boom when unemployment falls, and down in a recession. We know that since at least Tarshis and Dunlop critique of Keynes in the 1930s. One more reason why full employment is an important policy goal.

1 comment:

  1. Matias,

    You might also want to have a look at Art shipman's post, and his link to an earlier post - Unit Labor Cost

    It is all about the perils of regressing a CPI adjusted series against CPI -- It appears that such analysis is at the base of neo-liberal economic theory. Do see the linked posts as well.

    ReplyDelete

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