>Doug, I don't understand the answer they gave you. Are they saying that if I
>was given stock options five years ago, move onto another company the next
>year, and then cash them in today that the timing does not matter because
>somehow all of this averages out. It doesn't sound very convincing to me.
Right, that's what he said. But he conceded they have no idea how big a factor option income is. (The BLS is doing a survey of stock options, but they're still at an early stage.) He also said that they don't have any good ideas about why the statistical discrepancy has been so large for the last few years, with income running $75-100 billion ahead of product.
Doug