Tuesday, August 5, 2014

A Great Moderation of Work Stoppages


Graph #1: The Great Moderation of Work Stoppages
Source Data: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkstp.t01.htm
Marcus Nunes quotes Tim Duy quoting Binyamin Appelbaum; some bits strike me:

Ms. Yellen ... pointed to tepid wage growth as evidence that it remains easy to find workers.

“The recovery is not yet complete,” she told Congress this month.

Nunes also has Appelbaum quoting Duy on Yellen:

Until you get upward pressure on wages, it is terribly difficult to say that she’s wrong.

It's all very confusing, who said what, says I. But the bits were interesting, and I found myself googling data on wages. I clicked US Department of Labor - Find It By Topic - Statistics - Wages. Then under Subtopics, Wages, Earnings & Benefits. At the bottom of the page I clicked FedStats. And then again, FedStats.

You might want to put FedStats on your list of useful sources.

At FedStats I clicked Topic links - A to Z, then W for WAGES. And then Wages. That got me to a BLS "Subject Areas" page where, under Subject Area Categories I clicked Pay & Benefits. And at the bottom of the Pay & Benefits list, Work Stoppages.

On the Work Stoppages page, under Major Work Stoppages (Annual) I clicked (HTML). Then, under Table of Contents I clicked Table 1. Work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers, 1947-2013

And, good heavens, that got me the data to make the graph.


Access the Google Drive file.

4 comments:

The Arthurian said...

Did I ruin a really good graph with a really stupid collection of links? I hope not!

Jerry said...

It wasn't obvious to me, but it means "things like strikes", and not "things like furloughs", right?

The Arthurian said...

Both! The "wages" item under "pay and benefits" says:
Work Stoppages
Data on major work stoppages (lockouts and strikes).


Animosity is animosity, I guess.

Nathan J Kerr said...

The only way for wage pressure is through NAIRU (full employment) which is impossible if we allow (or turn a blind eye through execuative orders) mass importation of cheap labor.