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Archive for April 2019

Why The Drop in Avg. Weekly Wages?

April 11, 2019

In a presentation I gave to the NH Senate Ways and Means Committee I noted two important wage trends. First, the average weekly wage of NH workers today is actually a bit lower than it was in June of 2017. This does not mean that no worker’s wages are increasing. Rather, it reflects the mix of industry and occupational job growth in NH. Lower productivity and wage industries have added more jobs in NH than have higher productivity/wage industries. average weekly wages

Second, the weighted average weekly wage in the industries that added jobs in 2018 was $946 while it was $1,163 in the industries that lost jobs. But it is not accurate to suggest this implies the NH economy is somehow being “hollowed-out” of higher paying jobs. Data from the end of 2018 showed that there where 50% more job openings in the state in occupations that require a college degree (9,522) compared to jobs that don’t require a degree (6,132) at the same time there were 60% fewer individuals looking for a job and who have a degree than those looking for a job who don’t have a degree (5,532 vs 13,380).

openings an ed

Labor shortages are significant in all industries but higher skill jobs are much harder to fill so more lower skill/wage jobs are being added while higher skill jobs go unfilled, skewing the job growth mix and lowering wage growth trends in the state. Other contributing factors to slower average weekly wage growth in include a small decline in the average number of hours worked per week by employees in many industries.

Categories: job growth, Uncategorized, wages
Tags: job growth, NH economy, wage growth

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Big Banks Big Tax Savings

April 2, 2019

For the calendar year 2018, federal corporate tax revenues were about $91.4 billion lower than during calendar year 2017, a decline of about 32%. The federal corp. tax cuts that took effect in 2018 lowered the tax rate from 35% to 21% and are the primary reason that federal revenues were 0.4% lower in calendar year 2018 compared to 2017 (in a strong economy). All banks are required to file detailed financial reports to regulators on a quarterly basis. Examining that data provides an estimate of how banks were affected by the recent federal tax cuts. Comparing the average effective tax rate of banks between 2013 and 2016 (in 2017 banks paid an an anomalously high rate) to the rate in 2018 and applying the difference to the pretax income of banks provides an estimate of the savings banks received from the corp. tax cut. The table below shows that collectively, banks accounted for $31.7 billion or about 1/3^rd of the total corp. tax cut savings, with the 9 largest banks saving almost $15 billion or 16% of the total corporate tax savings in 2018 – an average $1.64 billion per bank. I expect banks, and big banks in particular to have an issue with this estimate so I encourage them to point out errors in my simple methodology. Tax cuts