Trading Up: A Critical Perspective on Jobs, Governance and Security in US Trade Policy

This Tuesday June 28, 2016, the AFL-CIO is holding a conference titled “Trading Up: A Critical Perspective on Jobs, Governance & Security in U.S. Trade Policy,” from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in Washington, DC. The full program is here. Participants include Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Tom Palley, Rob Scott, Jeff Faux, among others.

You can join online for what should be an lively and insightful debate—especially given recent developments around the Brexit and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

You can watch the conference here and join in the discussion online using #BetterTrade. Please tweet any questions for panelists to conference organizer Celeste Drake (@cdrakefairtrade).

CEO-to-worker pay ratios

New data by the AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch, available here. Note that union members do much better than nonunion members, and certainly than minimum wage workers.

For more context read this EPI report. You must admit that the use of flawed neoclassical thinking is sometimes amusing. In this Bloomberg post, an 'expert' (aka hired gun) from a free market think tank (pro-corporations propaganda machine) says that the "AFL-CIO study [is] 'useless' because it compares two different labor markets that should be evaluated separately. While most workers could easily be replaced, he said, CEOs are 'much harder to substitute.'" Yes, they are receiving according to their productivity, and is so hard to find these geniuses.

More Jobs, Still Weak Wage Growth: The Federal Reserve Must Wait

By Thomas Palley

February’s employment report showed a gain of 295,000 jobs and a decline in the unemployment rate to 5.5%. The report is another in a string of strong employment reports, but it also contains depressingly familiar news about weak wage growth and millions of workers still short of work.

Job gains were spread widely across all sectors, with particularly strong gains in the service sector. Construction added another 29,000 jobs despite bad weather, and manufacturing added 8,000 jobs. The only significant weaknesses were in mining (down 8,000) and petroleum and coal products (down 6,000), reflecting lower energy commodity prices.

On the other side of the ledger, there continues to be abundant labor supply. Though the unemployment rate ticked down to 5.5%, there are still 8.7 million unemployed workers, another 6.6 million workers who are working part-time but want full-time work, and a further 6.5 million workers who would enter the labor force if a job were available. That totals 21.8 million workers who would like more work, which provides clear evidence we are still far from full employment.

Read rest here.