[lbo-talk] A hundred grand a year???

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Nov 4 12:53:28 PST 2005


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


>Why so much difference between this estimate from 2004 and the
>figure that Doug cites from this year (which can't be accounted for
>by COLA, etc.)?

Ok, a BLS guy explained the difference to me. The Current Employment Statistics (CES) - the numbers that come out in the monthly employment report - includes overtime and incentive pay in its definition of wages; the OES, just base pay.

The page for motor vehicle manufacturing, a more comparable classification, is at <http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_336100.htm#b51-0000>. Note that the median production worker wage is actually higher than the mean, oddly enough.

Doug



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