The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported another month of solid job growth in September, bringing this year’s average to over 225,000 jobs per month—the highest average monthly job growth since 1999. As the jobs recovery consistently grinds on, more attention is shifting toward the absence of wage growth in the recovery. Wage stagnation is part of a longer-term trend that has been well-documented in EPI’s research. Last month’s Census Bureau report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in 2013 provided more evidence of weak wage growth following the recession. In my previous analysis of data from the Census report, I also identified how uneven that growth has been for different groups of women. Median real (ie, inflation-adjusted) annual earnings for African American women working full-time full-year in 2013 were 3.3 percent below the 2009 level, compared to 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent lower for white and Hispanic women, respectively.

Given the magnitude of that disparity, I sought to confirm it using hourly wage data for full-time full-year workers from the CPS ORG files, the data source for EPI’s signature research on wage trends. Based on that analysis, I identified similar racial disparities in women’s hourly wage growth.

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The Financial Times recently reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent $30 million to influence the upcoming elections, backing mostly Republicans candidates. The Chamber, upset with the so-called anti-business attitude of the Obama administration, wants a Congress that will cut corporate taxes. This rhetoric suggests that U.S. corporations have become so unprofitable they need tax relief in order to stay in business. So let’s take a look at corporate profitability.

The first figure below shows corporate profits (left axis) and corporate taxes (right axis) as a percent of national income since 1946. Corporate profits have bounced around over the last 68 years between 8 percent of national income and 14 percent. The high point over this period, however, was just last year. Furthermore, corporate profits as a percent of national income have been steadily rising since President Obama took office, though much of that is due to the recovery in corporate profits after the Great Recession. At least before taxes, corporations appear to be doing rather well in terms of profitability.

The figure also shows total taxes on corporate income as a percent of national income. Since 1946, corporate taxes have steadily decreased in relation to national income. In 2013, corporate taxes were at a level below the high point reached in the last Republican administration. The data suggests that corporate taxes have not been keeping up with corporate profitability.

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Integrity Staffing Solutions, which runs a warehouse operation for Amazon, makes employees go through a “security check” at the end of each working day, where they are searched for stolen goods. Even though employees spend 25 minutes being processed—and would be fired if they tried to skip the screening—Integrity doesn’t pay them a penny for their time. The employees sued and won, and the case has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, the Justice Department and Labor Department have filed a brief that takes the side of the Amazon subcontractor over its employees. This is a shame.

Over the past year, President Obama and Secretary of Labor Tom Perez have seemingly done everything within their power to lift wages and discourage the exploitation of workers. Obama has issued executive orders raising the minimum wage and requiring decent labor practices from federal contractors, Perez has issued a rule covering home-care workers under the minimum wage and overtime rules, and Obama directed Perez to update overtime rules so more salaried employees would have the right to overtime pay. So why are they fighting the employees in this case?

It doesn’t look like a matter of legal principle to me. Certainly, the application of the Portal to Portal Act, which frees employers from the obligation to pay for certain preliminary and postliminary activities such as traveling to the work site or changing from a uniform into civilian clothes, isn’t obvious in this case. The court of appeals found that the search for stolen property was integral and necessary to the business operation of the warehouse, and that seems right to me. If the screening isn’t “integral and necessary” to the business operation, why would the employer fire employees who skip it? If making employees remove work clothes and shower after work to remove toxins has to be compensated (and the Supreme Court has said that it does), why isn’t making them remove belts and shoes and other clothing to prevent theft? (Cases finding that making employees—and everyone else—go through airport security screenings aren’t analogous because the employees are only being required to do what everyone has to do. It isn’t integral and necessary to the business operation, it’s a general requirement of federal law.)

So if it’s a close legal question, why didn’t the Obama administration side with the workers and ask the Supreme Court to uphold the Court of Appeals decision in their favor? I’m afraid it’s because the federal government is doing the same thing as Integrity, and doesn’t want to be sued. The brief of the United States includes a “Statement of Interest” explaining why it wanted to file a friend of the court brief. Here’s what it says, in part:

“The United States also employs many employees who are covered by the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. 203(e)(2)(A), and requires physical-security checks in many settings. The United States accordingly has a substantial interest in the resolution of the question presented.”

In other words, as an employer, the government wants to be able to get away without paying its own workers for their time. This is wrong.

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Last night, the American Enterprise Institute’s Jim Pethokoukis, with whom I occasionally agree on matters of fiscal policy, took to Twitter to “clarify” the fiscal implications of many progressive priorities.

Basically, Pethokoukis is arguing that federal spending levels as high as some (slightly-caricatured version of) progressives have called for would require a broad-based tax hike on all Americans.

There’s plenty to dislike about this claim, but the most important issue is that no progressives I know are arguing for a specific federal spending level for all occasions. Instead, we want federal spending levels that are consistent with our policy priorities. So, for example, in times of weak aggregate demand, spending should temporarily rise to finance safety net programs, aid to state and local governments, and public investments to put people back to work. When the economy gets going again and we are near full employment, federal spending should then pull back. Over the longer run, spending levels should be sufficient to preserve the social insurance programs we have (which are not particularly generous), as well as finance needed public investments, vital safety net programs, and the efficient running of government. (So no phony savings like slashing the budget of the IRS.)

The liberal end game is 30% of GDP spending, financed by a VAT and other taxes.

— James Pethokoukis (@JimPethokoukis) October 6, 2014

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In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andrew Biggs and Sylvester Schieber cited these statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD):

“Despite a supposedly stingy Social Security program and ineffective retirement-savings vehicles, the average U.S. retiree has an income equal to 92% of the average American income, handily outpacing the Scandinavian countries (81%), Germany (85%), Belgium (77%) and many others.”

Meanwhile, in its Global AgeWatch Index released Tuesday, HelpAge International ranked the United States #8 among the best countries to grow old in, ahead of France (#18) but trailing Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, and Iceland (#1-7). Afghanistan (#96) was in last place.

It’s not hard to imagine how wealthy countries like Norway and the United States outrank poor and war-torn countries like Afghanistan. But the relative ranking of the wealthy countries comes as a surprise. How did the United States and other English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom and Australia, not known for their generous social insurance programs or employee benefits, come close to the Nordic cradle-to-grave welfare states and handily beat out France, with its famously generous pensions and high-quality affordable healthcare? Are older Americans really living in a retiree paradise?

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