Class war and labor's declining share

Monthly Review

Volumn 64, Issue 10, 2013, Pages 1-11

  Magdoff, Fred ^a   Foster, John Bellamy ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84877302360     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-10-2013-03_1     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. US. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economic News Release, Alternative Measures of Labor Utilization, Table A-15, http://bls.gov
2. Ninety-six million full time equivalent private sector workers calculated assuming a forty hour work week and using actual hours worked per week from Average Weekly Hours Of All Employees: Total Private (AWHAEIP) and number of private employees from All Employees: Total Private Industries (USPRIV), from St Louis Federal Reserve FRED database, http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/, December 30, 2012.
3. U. S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables: Households, Table H-6. Regions-AII Races by Median and Mean, http://census.gov.
4. Melanie Trottman and Kris Maher, "Organized labor Loses Members", Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2013, http://online.wsj.com.
5. Catherine Rampell, "Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds", New York Times, August 30, 2012, http://nytimes.com.
6. St. Louis Federal Reserve, FRED database, Employed, Usually Work Part Time (LNS12600000), January 4, 2013, http://research.stlouisfed.org.
7. Bureau of Labor Statistics database, Employment, Hours, and Eamings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National! Employees Temporary Help Services (series ID CES6056132001), http://data.bls.gov.
8. James K. Galbraith, Created Unequal (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 82-83.
9. Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Occhino, "Behind the Decline in Labor's Share of Income", Cleveland Federal Reserve, 2012, http://clevelandfed.org;
10. Congressional Budget Office, What Accounts for the Slow Growth of the Economy After the Recession? (see Figure 7, p. 14), 2012, http://cbo.gov. Galbraith's data here shows that direct income to capital in the form of interest dividends, and rent increased from 10 percent of personal income in the 1940s to 17 percent in the 1990s.
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. S. Department of Labor, "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation" database, http://bls.gov.
12. Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 12th edition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 182.
13. Michal Kalecki, The Last Phase of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 110.
14. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey, http://bls.gov.
15. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, Great Financial Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012), 129.
16. On government spending (government consumption and investment) as a percent of GDP over the post-Second World War period, see John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, "A New New Deal Under Obama?", Monthly Review 60, no. 9 (February 2009): 4-5.
17. David M. Gordon, Fat and Mean (New York; Free Press, 1996), 19-20.
18. Calculated from Table B-47 of the 2012 Economic Report of the President http://gpo.gov.
19. Table B-47, Hours and earnings in private nonagricultural industries, 1965-2011, 2012 Economic Report of the President http://gpo.gov.
20. Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 12th edition, 186. The data goes up to the ninety-fifth percentile and does not include the income of the top 5 percent of the population.
21. See Michael Zweig, "Six Points on Class", in Michael Yates, ed., More Unequal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), 173-82. In a larger sense the working class also can be seen as including many of those on public assistance and who have retired as well, along with dependents. But we are dealing here only with the working class as a component of the officially designated labor force.
22. From St Louis Federal Reserve FRED database, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees: Total Private (CES0500000006), updated January 1, 2013, http://research.stlouisfed.org.
23. Carmen De Navas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica C. Smith, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011, United States Census Bureau, 2012, http://census.gov.
24. Bill Moyers, "Which America Will We Be Now?", The Nation 271, no. 16 (November 19, 2001): 11-14.
25. "Right Direction or Wrong Track: 35% Say U. S. Heading in the Right Direction", Rasmussen Reports, January 23, 2013, http://rasmussenreports. com.