Posts Tagged: wages
In Pursuit of the California Dogface Butterfly
Few people have seen California's state insect in the wild, but now thousands will this week--on...
Bohart Museum of Entomology associate and dogface butterfly expert Greg Kareofelas (left) shows a California dogface butterfly to Rob Stewart of "Rob on the Road" at the Shutamul Bear River Preserve. (Photo by Fran Keller)
The Shutamul Bear River Preserve near Auburn, Placer County, encompasses 40 acres and is considered "the" best habitat for the dogface butterfly. (Photo by Fran Keller)
Rob Stewart of "Rob on the Road" takes a selfie with a California dogface butterfly. (Photo by Greg Kareofelas)
Bohart Museum of Entomology associates Fran Keller (left) and Greg Kareofelas pose with Rob Stewart of "Rob on the Road." Keller, an entomologist with a doctoral degree from UC Davis, is an assistant professor at Folsom Lake College, and Kareofelas is a naturalist/photographer.
This is the group, including UC Master Gardeners, who toured the dogface butterfly habitat. Rob Stewart of "Rob on the Road" is kneeling, front left. Many wore butterfly shirts. Justin Wages, Placer Land Trust manager, is back row, fourth from left.
Millennial Latinos See Better Future, But Also Worry About It
The poll found that 87 percent of millennial Latinos are concerned that Social Security won't exist when they need it. It also found concern from about the same share of Latino millennials over having to help parents with health care and living expenses when they are older.
By contrast, 63 percent of Latinos 36 and older said they are worried about the availability of Social Security and 69 percent about caring for parents.
However, asked about how they'd be doing financially a year from now, 63 percent of millennials thought they'd be better off, while just 36 percent of the 36-and-older group expect financial improvement.
The poll, conducted by Latino Decisions for NCLR, surveyed 1,000 Latino registered voters about economic, health and political issues. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The poll included an oversample of millennial Latino registered voters. In a telephone news conference, Eric Rodriguez, an NCLR vice president, said the poll was intended to get more detailed views of Latinos on various issues of the election campaign.
"In spite a lot of the attention around the Latino vote (this election), we haven't seen an intentional or deep engagement with our community, particularly around issues," Rodriguez said.
"No one is really talking to our community and asking what's top of our mind … and what Latino voters are thinking at the dinner tables. What keep us up at night. What are our aspirations and what our thoughts about the future and those that we love.”
Studies have shown that once registered, Latinos have high voting rates. About 85 percent of millennial Latino voters said they definitely would vote, compared to 90 percent of Latino voters 36 and older.
Latinos are younger than the national population as a whole and about 44 percent of Latino eligible voters are millennials. The turnout rates for young Latinos overall, those registered and not registered, lag behind the turnout rates for black and white young voters.
Election preferences of the two groups were about the same, with 66 percent of millennial Latinos saying they'd vote for Clinton and 19 percent for Trump.
Seventy-three percent of Latinos 36 and older said they would vote for Clinton and 16 were voting for Trump.
However, 9 percent of millennials said they'd vote for a third party candidate, compared to 2 percent of 36 and older Latinos.
When asked to list the top economic issue the new Congress and president should address, both groups listed first the need to create more and better paying jobs.
But the second and third most mentioned issues for millennials were college affordability and student loan debt as well as an improvement of wages or raising the minimum wage, in that order.
For Latinos 36 and older, immigration reform was the second most mentioned issue, showing how that group sees a link between immigration and the economy. Third on the list was keeping the Social Security program strong.
"When people say that the economy is a priority issue, they do have very particular things that they're talking about," said Sylvia Manzano, a principal with Latino Decisions.
Manzano said despite portrayals of millennials as pessimistic, the poll showed that generally, that description doesn't apply to Latino millennials.
"There's not a lot of pessimism among any age group — but the degree to which the younger cohort thinks things will be better is quite dramatic," she said.
Source: Published originally on nbcnews.com Poll: Millennial Latinos See Better Future, But Also Worry About It, by Suzanne Gamboa, October 27, 2016.
Wage Growth Accelerating
This article is one of many putting empirical evidence to what most of you already know: wage growth is accelerating. The "Chart of the Week" in the middle of the page is a must see for any employer trying to map out what wages are going to look like going forward. They are going to rise and not insignificantly.
http://guggenheiminvestments.com/perspectives/macro-view/against-this-rosy-backdrop
The "rosy economic backdrop" for this uptick in employment opportunity and wage growth? Greater household formation (meaning more demand for houses), lower energy prices, a stable dollar, a strengthening European economy and yes even more exports.
Where is the Wage Growth?
One of the surprising things about the current economic recovery is that while unemployment is falling, wage growth on a national level is almost non-existent (see chart below). Granted, in the berry business on the Central Coast, our labor issues are more complex as they involve economic improvement in Mexico as well as competition for workers from the hospitality and construction industries (and subsequently wages have been creeping up for the last couple of years), but nevertheless I think it's important enough to understand the bigger picture that we spend a moment on it.
Let's go then to a recent speech given by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, which goes some ways to explain what is happening here.
The excerpt below is pretty dense, but I'll summarize it for you in three points:
1. Wages were not cut very much during the Great Recession, meaning that they well could have been unrealistically high over the past few years of economic recovery. Which means that right now wages might have finally reached an appropriate level, so employers are still not having raise wages too much to attract qualified workers.
2. Productivity in this economic up cycle has been rising faster than wages, implying that the real cost of labor has been falling - in other words saying that while the economy is strong thanks in part to gains in productivity, wages haven't necessarily needed to follow. Importantly, looking forward, these gains in productivity may continue to persist, meaning that large wage gains might not be in the offing for quite some time into the future.
3. Conversely, watch for the possibility of wage gains even though full employment hasn't yet been reached. Some workers who have been unemployed for a while might have difficulty getting back even though they are actively looking because their skill set isn't in step with what is now needed. As communicated to me by a city official, this might in fact be the case in Watsonville, which still has an unemployment rate of around 15% even though the local agricultural economy is quite strong.
For those interested in the details, here is the excerpt:
"…since wage movements have historically been sensitive to tightness in the labor market, the recent behavior of both nominal and real wages point to weaker labor market conditions than would be indicated by the current unemployment rate.
There are three reasons, however, why we should be cautious in drawing such a conclusion. First, the sluggish pace of nominal and real wage growth in recent years may reflect the phenomenon of “pent-up wage deflation.” The evidence suggests that many firms faced significant constraints in lowering compensation during the recession and the earlier part of the recovery because of “downward nominal wage rigidity”–namely, an inability or unwillingness on the part of firms to cut nominal wages. To the extent that firms faced limits in reducing real and nominal wages when the labor market was exceptionally weak, they may find that now they do not need to raise wages to attract qualified workers. As a result, wages might rise relatively slowly as the labor market strengthens. If pent-up wage deflation is holding down wage growth, the current very moderate wage growth could be a misleading signal of the degree of remaining slack. Further, wages could begin to rise at a noticeably more rapid pace once pent-up wage deflation has been absorbed.
Second, wage developments reflect not only cyclical but also secular trends that have likely affected the evolution of labor's share of income in recent years. As I noted, real wages have been rising less rapidly than productivity, implying that real unit labor costs have been declining, a pattern suggesting that there is scope for nominal wages to accelerate from their recent pace without creating meaningful inflationary pressure. However, research suggests that the decline in real unit labor costs may partly reflect secular factors that predate the recession, including changing patterns of production and international trade, as well as measurement issues. If so, productivity growth could continue to outpace real wage gains even when the economy is again operating at its potential.
A third issue that complicates the interpretation of wage trends is the possibility that, because of the dislocations of the Great Recession, transitory wage and price pressures could emerge well before maximum sustainable employment has been reached, although they would abate over time as the economy moves back toward maximum employment. The argument is that workers who have suffered long-term unemployment–along with, perhaps, those who have dropped out of the labor force but would return to work in a stronger economy–face significant impediments to reemployment. In this case, further improvement in the labor market could entail stronger wage pressures for a time before maximum employment has been attained.
H/T http://www.thereformedbroker.com/
Thanks Josh!
Chart of the day
Second-generation Latinas close gap with Whites in college enrollment
The study, titled “Up for Grabs: The Gains and Prospects of First- and Second-Generation Young Adults," set out to paint a portrait of the more than 11 million “immigrant-origin” adults between the ages of 16 and 26. Such youth account for half the growth of the young adult population in the United States between 1995 and 2010, according to the study. As such their trajectory in the classroom and on the job takes on new prominence as they assume a greater role in a U.S. workforce that continues to age.
Hispanics are 58 percent of the country’s 4.8 million first-generation young adults – defined in the report as people between the ages of 16 and 26. And Hispanics accounted for 53 percent of the 6.5 million second-generation Americans, MPI said.
Some highlights of the report include:
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Latinas have a 46 percent college enrollment rate, roughly the same as non-Latina white women, but when it comes to obtaining a degree, Latinas lag behind by 18 percent. Slightly more than 50 percent of non-Latina white women obtain their degree, compared with Latinas at 33 percent, according to the study. Research shows that wages rise with every level of education. Second-generation Hispanic women with at least a bachelor’s degree earn on average $10 more per hour than those with a high school degree.
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Second-generation Latinos enrolled in college at a rate of 37 percent, compared with non-Latino white men, who have a rate of 40 percent. Third-generation Latino men, however, enrolled at rate of 35 percent.
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This is particularly significant because our research shows that wages rise with every level of education. Second-generation Hispanic women with at least a bachelor’s degree earn on average $10 more per hour than those with a high school degree.
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Roughly 2.2 million foreign-born youth are bilingual, meaning they reported speaking English “very well” in addition to speaking a second language.
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First- and second-generation Americans who are not Latinos have higher educational attainment than their Latino peers, as well as third-generation Hispanics and African-Americans.
Source: Latino.FoxNews.com, Second-Generation Latinas Close Gap with Whites in College Enrollment, by Elizabeth Llorente, November 15, 2011.
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