Maybe its The Economy

We keep hearing how well the economy is doing, so I thought I would focus on a few statistics to see how well things really are going for the average Joe and Jill.

Since Bush took over in January 2001, total private employment has grown by a meager 572,000 persons through October of this year, a mere 0.107 percent annual compound rate of growth . The average hourly earnings of these folks (in constant 1982 dollars) have grown a mere 6 cents from $8.03 in January 2001 to $8.09 in October 2005. [Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics seasonlly adjusted estimates] Meanwhile, the population has been growing at an average annual rate of about 1.6% per year, about 15 times faster than the growth in private employment, according to the Census Bureau. If private employment had grown at that rate since 2001, there would be 5.7 million more people employed today than are actually employed. What are those 5.7 million people doing? Good question. No answer. Somebody must be feeding them, I would think. So, if you took the money made by those who are actually employed and spread it over the number that would have been employed if those extra 5.7 million were working, the average hourly earnings of those in that pool, have actually fallen from $8.03 in January 2001 to $7.70 by October 2005. Hmmm. Doesn't look so good to me!

Update: To make matters worse according to the BLS, the typical worker works fewer hours now than in January 2001. The average has fallen from 34.2 hours per week in January 2001 to 33.8 hours by October 2005. Hence the average worker's take home pay has actually declined (in real terms) by about a half a percent since Bush took office.