wages

My view since the beginning of the financial crisis has been that policy levers to alleviate this private debt stress are limited, and that this limitation will be felt in defaults, writedowns and deleveraging of a magnitude that is larger…

The latest quarterly figures for Germany have come out and they show an improving domestic demand trend in Germany. Net trade lowered economic growth because of weak export volume. These results and the institution of a minimum wage will…

The recent IMF proposals to help stimulate growth and job creation in Spain at least deserve serious consideration. What the IMF are saying is that if you leave the situation as it is then growth will not be sufficient to make any…

By Sober Look One of the key reasons for the mediocre economic growth in the US has been the ongoing weakness in household wages. As the chart below shows, US median inflation-adjusted household income (red line) remains well below…

What if automation means that what capitalists really want is a very small, highly skilled workforce to control the robots that do all the work? What if paying people enough to live on simply is not cost-effective compared to the running…

While consumer spending is up on the previous year, the growth in spending has moderated to the lowest level in three years.

Economic growth is good. But what we want to see is job and wage growth to complement the asset-price growth. Without this catch up on the job and income front, the economy is on an unsustainable course.

It is not being widely discussed, but we suspect the wage settlement in Germany over the weekend is an important development. The agreement that covers 765k state government workers in Germany, represented by Verdi, reached a two-year deal…

A lot is being made of the new high that was recorded by the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday. However, in the context of still weak income growth and lacklustre economic growth, the new Dow highs are not as widely celebrated as the…

Yesterday I said that, given the housing rebound, it seemed ever more likely that the US economy would be able to power through the budget cuts from the sequester and the fiscal cliff. This is the asset-based economy at work. There is…