Snapshot for March 12, 2003.

There’s no hiding from the new economy…part 2

The January 22 Economic Snapshot focused on the dramatic increase in the unemployment rates of computer scientists, revealing the widespread pain of the jobless recovery. The figure below shows the wage side of the story.

The data in the figure are yearly changes in the nominal (not inflation-adjusted) wages of professional and technical workers, a white-collar category that includes some of the most highly skilled workers in the economy, including those in high-tech industries. The effect of the recent recession can be seen at the end of the figure, as wage growth has fallen sharply since the first quarter of 2001. In fact, the 1.7% rate of wage growth over the past year—between 2001:4
and 2002:4—was the slowest in the history of the series, well below the
rate of inflation over that period (2.2%). Thus, pervasive weakness in the labor market has led to falling real wages, even for some of the most highly educated workers.

This week’s Snapshot by EPI economist Jared Bernstein.

Check out the archive for past Economic Snapshots.