Word: nonfarm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...blame the American worker for demanding more? In the private, nonfarm sector, his real hourly compensation has been declining for more than 15 months-and he has to get off the treadmill some time...
Administration inflation fighters worry most that while wages are rising, productivity in the private nonfarm sector of the economy is declining. It went down at an annual rate of more than 5% in the first quarter and almost 3% in the second quarter. As a result, the so-called unit labor costs-that is, the cost of labor to produce a given quantity of goods-has jumped at an annual rate of 14% this year. This, of course, will further fuel inflation, which in turn will fire the workers' frustrations...
...twelve months through April, average hourly wages of U.S. private nonfarm workers rose a mere 6.3%, trailing far behind a 10% rise in consumer prices. But in May, the first month after the death of wage-price controls, workers' wages rose at a stunning annual rate of 19.1%. Though that probably was a statistical fluke, Otto Eckstein, a member of TIME'S Board of Economists, calculates that wages and benefits for the current quarter will go up at an annual rate of 9.2%, and that the rate will rise, to 9.8% in the fourth quarter. Experts...
...first quarter of 1974 it fell at an annual rate of 5.6%. That is a longer and deeper drop in purchasing power than occurred during any of the five recognized U.S. postwar recessions. Unfortunately, employers cannot absorb outsized wage increases through higher productivity. Output per man-hour of the nonfarm work force actually dropped at an annual rate of 3.5% in the first quarter. Thus a wage explosion will only force more of the price increases that have made past pay rises meaningless...
...hovered there ever since. In 1972, 33% of America's black families fell below the poverty line. (The current poverty line, recently revised upward from $4,275 due to a rise in the consumer price index, is an income of $4,500 for a nonfarm family of four.) Inflation has hurt the black poor particularly cruelly because they have to spend a larger percentage of their income for food and shelter than middle-income people do, and prices for these basics have been spiraling. A Congressional Joint Economic Committee study concludes that last year people in the poverty category...