My favorite is chart 6 - a crystal clear exposition of hugely divergent paths of productivity and compensation starting in 1982 onward.
Unfortunately, the chart hides the reality of compensation, as it includes top earners. It displays the flattening of ECI since 1982, which is an *average *of compensation across all wage levels, including everyone. Were the chart to use something more sensible, such as *median *or 75th percentile, one would see not a flattening of compensation, but a descending trajectory.
In other words, if the chart displayed median (50th percentile) as in this figure: http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/files/images/orig/3C_men_realfigure.png then the divergence starting in 1982 would be even more enormous with compensation dropping precipitously. The BLS chart is flat because BLS is using the *'natural log'* of the compensation index (not the true index)*.* If they instead took the natural log of the *median* compensation index, the compensation line would drop like a rock.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find such a thing - 'median' or 'percentile' compensation (ECI). Anyone out there know where I might find such an animal? I know people use EPI-ORG for this data, but I'm looking for a more user-friendly source of the data...
-Peter
On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:37 PM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Charts 5. and 10. are pretty interesting.
> While labor's share of all non-farm business sector output doesn't really
> start to fall markedly until the age of neoliberal globalization (1978
> onward), labors share of manufacturing sector output starts to decline
> precipitously a decade earlier.
> Other than that, pretty much every graph indicates major shifts pretty much
> all occur just prior to, during or immediately following the Reagan
> recession of 81-82.
>
>
