Business bigwigs making a buck at your expense, still.

Nah, it was actually a pretty easy read.

But, they don't lay out the problem as one of excess CEO compensation and it's significantly less alarmist that the NY Times article. Most all of the shift they discuss is in the "profit" category. CEOs did see some increase and it was more than the average worker but it wasn't the lions share of the total. (CEO Compensation shifted from 8% of total national income to 12% - Most of that is probably because of changes in the laws that limit CEO compensation through stock options post-ENRON. The loss of options was probably made up by increasing direct salary.)

37% of the shift was in the "Corporate Profits" area but they don't discuss what companies used those profits for anywhere. (Maybe it's all in a bank account in the Cayman Islands??)

They also discuss in length that a partial accounting for the shift is that unemployment increased over the period studied. Since their measure is the "National Income" the "employee share" is reduced because there were less employees. (If I employe 3 people and pay each $50,000/yr and then I lay one off and raise the pay of the other remaining 2 to $60,000/yr I've increased the pay of the remaining 2 significantly but the "employee share" between the 3 original people is still reduced to $30,000/yr.).

Even with the loss of 521,000 jobs during the period covered employee compensation accounted for a 5.2% increase. It would be interesting to see how the numbers come out if the 521,000 weren't accounted for in the numbers. The profits and CEO portions would decrease and teh employee portion would increase. I'm not sure how much though.

thanks fishin.

My understanding of the study was that while CEOs, companies and employees all were earning more, employees were earning less more (heh!) than CEOs. Marketplace's piece (I never actually read the NYTimes article, just found it for reference) on te study said that for the very first time CEOs are making a greater percentage of the surplus than are employees. Never before had this happened, said his guest (some specialist). You'd think that in past post recession stats there's be something comparable.

100% true. But the numbers aren't based on individual employees or CEOs. The numbers are based on aggregrates. They also mention that of the 1.9 million people laid off (according to the CPS Survey) many went back to work as Independent Contractors or are Self-employed. Those people all shifted from the "employee compensation" distribution of corporate income to the "CEO" section so they account for some of the shift but the study doesn't say how much of it.



There are. They go back as far as the late 1950s. I think the difference here is this "jobless recovery" we've all heard about. We've never had a period of recovery like this before where so few jobs were created. That's the only thing that's unique as far as I know.

This is not a jobless recovery, the jobs are being created elsewhere. Employment in China and Indian for examples is booming. This is what happens when you have a global economy but the record keeping and analysis is still local.