Talk About Scrooge
Published: December 6, 2004


In November, wages grew a whopping 1 cent an hour. But that was clawed back by a six-minute decline in the average workweek, producing a $1.25 drop in weekly earnings. Coming on the heels of a sluggish start to the holiday shopping season, the Labor Department's latest employment report, released Friday, doesn't presage a particularly merry Christmas or happy New Year for millions of working Americans.

In what is becoming a dismally predictable occurrence, the economy produced far fewer jobs than expected last month - 112,000 new slots versus an expectation of 200,000 - for the worst new-job total since last July, which was widely characterized as an economic "soft patch." Moreover, job growth in October and September was not as good as once believed. Those monthly numbers, disappointing on their own, reinforce what is now an unmistakable pattern in which the economy grows at a decent pace and corporate profits surge, while wages lag inflation and job creation barely keeps pace with the growth in the labor market.

We know how we got here. Tax cuts were misdirected at investment rather than consumption, resulting in an economic recovery weaker than it might have been.