The Language of Betrayal

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Nov 28 15:20:52 PST 2000


SergioL652 at aol.com wrote:


>Quick question. In 1992 one of Clinton's campaign slogans was that the US
>was last among industrialized nations in hourly wage. Was this statistic
>changed much during his presidency? I have not seen this mentioned anywhere
>in the media.

The BLS numbers on international comparison of manufacturing wages are at <http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/ichcc.t02.htm>. (These include fringe benefits - conceptually, they're the cost to employers, not the benefit to workers. But they're close enough for the net.) The U.S. comes in 11th, if I'm counting right, which was up from 13th during the '92 campaign (if I'm remembering right). The dollar has been pretty strong during this period, so some of the improvement is a currency effect, and not a wage effect.

Doug



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