Jobs, pay, and the score so far

In June, real average weekly earnings were down 1.4 percent from June 2003.

So the approximately 80 percent of Americans relying primarily on wages and salaries are seeing their real welfare decline as slack in the job market lets business restrain pay boosts, argues Mr. Bernstein.

Tim Kane, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, says the "real story" is that after-inflation "disposable income," that is, income after taxes are taken out, has risen 7.5 percent since January 2001. On a per capita basis, real disposable income is up 5.2 percent, or $1,819 per family. Those numbers reflect Bush tax cuts that were broad-based, but because key cuts related to income from investments, that extra income was reaped mostly by higher-income individuals.

In the first quarter of this year, says Shenfeld, wages and salaries had the smallest share of total national income than at any time since World War II. By contrast, business profits were booming, up 62 percent since Bush took office..

After MoveOn.org, a group dedicated to ousting Bush, ran a television ad showing a dejected middle-aged worker preparing to flip burgers at his new job, the political debate has centered on the quality of new jobs as much as their quantity.

The charge that low-quality service jobs - often dubbed McJobs - are proliferating, is "inaccurate," holds Mr. Kane. "American jobs are better today and getting better every year." He explains that "the modern workplace is empowering individuals to work for themselves, enjoy flexible hours, and pursue dreams rather than survival."

The Joint Economic Committee, Republican-led, holds that "occupations that are relatively well-paid account for most of the net increase in employment between June 2003 and June 2004." Some 71.4 percent of the net increase was in management, professional, and related occupations; construction and extraction; and installation, maintenance, and repair.

Bernstein counters that the JEC analysis "means little" because the nation has been occupationally upgrading for decades, moving from blue to white-collar work. Looking at industry and occupation, the groups growing faster than average pay about 7 percent less than those growing slower than average, he says.

The debate remains hot. A voter advocacy group, Factcheck.org, found "good evidence that job quality has increased over the past year or more." Then the Economic Policy Institute Tuesday charged that the Factcheck study was "flawed" in its use of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The EPI said the job quality trend is not as good as usual, despite the long-term trend that more new jobs are coming in higher-paying categories than lower-paying ones.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dipped a toe into these troubled waters last week, testifying on Capitol Hill that "we've not been able to find a significantly meaningful change in the quality of the jobs being produced" relative to those lost.

Corporate salary budgets this year are up 3.5 percent on average, the second time in 11 years (the first was in 2003) that the rise fell much below 4 percent, finds a survey by the Conference Board in New York.

Behind all the Bush-Kerry debate over economics is an even broader question: How much influence does a president really have on the economy? Shenfeld, for instance, suspects the economic troubles in the US started before Bush took office, but says the Bush tax cuts could have been better designed to boost the economy and create jobs faster.

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