University Daily Kansan
Friday, October 13. 1978
Prices rose faster than earnings in last five years, survey shows
WASHINGTON (AP) — You're a typical full-time worker, your earnings rose by close to 43 percent during the past five years. But inflation was even higher and that means you're getting less for your salary in 1973, a new government survey shows.
A Labor Department report released yesterday found that the typical worker kept up with inflation between May 1977 and March 2014, with earnings and prices rising by 7 percent.
But if you are a typical worker your earnings probably did not keep up with rising prices during the five-year period and have to be dependent on the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
The bureau's findings are based on "median" earnings—the income level at which half of the nation's 69.4 million full-time workers are above and half are below.
THE BUREAU said median earnings of full-time workers, before deductions, increased from $159 a week in 1973 to $227 a week in May 1978 - a 43 percent rise. But consumer prices rose 47 percent during the same period.
The bureau says that after statistical adjustment, that translates into a 3 percent increase.
Put another way, a paycheck that bought you $100 worth of goods in 1973 would buy you $526. In 1981, a paycheck that bought you $100
The median figure best reflects the "typical" LL.S user survey analyses say.
THE GOVERNMENT has been conducted annual wage surveys since 1967, and has found that gross earnings have been rising by about 7 percent a year.
Two postal unions accept new contract
WASHINGTON (AUPI) - Neither rain nor snow sleet or snow nor storms will stay the postal couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds—at least for this
The American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers—the country's two largest postal unions—announced Wednesday their intention to arbitrate a contract settlement and end a nearly 6-month labor dispute that
Special mediator James Healy's settlement gave 500,000 post workers unlimited cost of living increases matched his salary and had a substantial job security and higher pay raises.
threatened to erupt into a nationwide mail strike.
During those 11 years, typical weekly wages have more than doubled, from $109 a week in 1967 to the $227 recorded this year. That is slightly above the rate of inflation. That means your buying power today is about 7 percent higher than it was in 1967. Of goods with a paycheck that bought $10 worth of those same goods in 1967.
Healy's ruling was considered final and binding, but the unions had mandated their leaders to give members a vote on any contract, thus keeping alive chances of a strike.
So the survey's long-range conclusion shows that your earnings probably rose fast enough between 1967 and 1973 to stay ahead of inflation, but—as you probably have suspected—you've been losing some ground to inflation during the past five years.
A key factor in the decline in buying power since 1973 is the huge rise in imported oil prices that triggered double-digit inflation in 1974 and led to a recession in 1975.
IF YOU are a typical nonwhite worker, however, you have bucked the trend. Although a median nonwhite worker's earnings of $188 a week still falls below the $232 a week that a typical white worker makes, the nonwhite employee's income has increased by more than a percent a year in the past 11 years—faster than that of whites in the past 11 years than inflation.
As a result, the buying power of typical nonwhite workers has increased nearly 22 percent since 1967, which means they can buy $122 worth of goods with a paycheck that got them only $100 worth of those same goods 11 years ago.
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