Nicholas Martinez
1 min readMay 10, 2017

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Wages aren’t the right metric to measure here. We need to measure ‘total compensation’ figures.

According to the BLS:

Employer costs for employee compensation averaged $27.31 per hour worked in September 2006. Wages and salaries, which averaged $19.12, accounted for 70 percent of these costs

And in March of 2017 the BLS reported:

Employer costs for employee compensation averaged $34.90 per hour worked in December 2016. Wages and salaries averaged $23.87 per hour worked and accounted for 68.4 percent of these costs

That is an increase of 27% in cost with a a reduction the total percentage going to employees.

Wages are stagnate because employers, for the most part, are absorbing the higher costs of primarily health insurance, but also other benefits and mandates that go into hiring people. Wages aren’t increasing because every year it simply costs more to hire the same people.

Fomenting the class war by suggesting it is all going to profits only holds water if you’ve never had to make payroll but it is a good way to get people to agree with you.

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