Why It Takes a Doctorate To Beat Inflation
The typical American worker with a four-year college degree earns a lot more money than a similar worker who didn't go beyond high school -- 45% more.
Education does pay. But in today's economy, getting a bachelor's degree is no longer a guarantee of raises big enough to beat inflation.
WALL STREET JOURNAL VIDEO
David Wessel discusses a growing disparity in the salaries of workers in America.
CAPITAL EXCHANGE
Send comments on this week's column to
capital@wsj.com.Although the best-paid college grads are doing well, wages of college grads have fallen on average, after adjusting for inflation, in the past five years. The only group that enjoyed rising wages between 2000 (just before the onset of the last recession) and 2005 (the most-recent data available) were the small slice with graduate degrees.
Think about that: Even though the economy and productivity have been growing smartly, lots of workers who played by the rules and went the distance to get a four-year college degree aren't getting ahead.
How come? Labor's slice of the apple is smaller and corporate profits' slice is larger, but that's probably temporary. The more lasting trend: Labor's share has been sliced increasingly unevenly. The very best-paid workers are getting the bulk of the raises.
Wage inequality has been widening for a couple of decades; the trend didn't coincide with the election of President Bush. At first, Americans in the middle were gaining on those at the bottom, and Americans at the top were gaining on those in the middle, and so on, all at about the same pace.
But in the past decade, the gap between the bottom and the middle hasn't widened much while wages at the top have pulled away. The wage gap between those with business, law, medical or other postgraduate degrees has widened a lot more than the gap between college and high-school graduates. Even excluding capital gains, tax-return data crunched by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley show that the top 1% in the U.S. got 16% of all income in 2004, compared with 9% in 1984.
Before nitpicking emails arrive: No single set of numbers gives a complete picture. The data in this chart cover only cash wages -- not health benefits or pensions. If they were included, most of those inflation-adjusted minuses would turn to pluses. But inequality wouldn't disappear. The best-paid 20% of workers on private payrolls are three times as likely to have health insurance as those in the bottom 20%, and this tally doesn't count stock options and the like -- and you know who gets the bulk of those.
The question isn't whether the gap between winners and losers in the labor market is widening; it's why. And it's no longer as simple as saying: The more education one gets, the more one earns. Something more complicated is driving up pay at the top.
Explanations come in three strains, all of which have some merit. One, it's more socially acceptable than it was a generation ago for the top-tier chief executive, hedge-fund manager or baseball players to make an enormous amount of money. Two, the world has changed in ways that make the No. 1 or No. 2 -- whether a trial lawyer or a rock star -- much more valuable than No. 19 and 20. As technology has helped create superstars, the gap between Oprah's paycheck and those of local talk-show hosts is larger than ever.
And, three, there's the influence on supply and demand of globalization and technology. At the high end, sharply rising wages suggest demand for the most-educated workers is growing faster than the supply. "The very top is doing very well," says Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz. "It's changes in demand, combined with the fact that it's very hard to replicate a lot of that talent... and we haven't expanded the ranks of those professions as fast as we could."
At the bottom, where the supply is influenced by the ranks of unskilled immigrants and laid-off workers falling out of the middle class, demand for hotel workers, nursing aides, security guards and the like may be helping to prop up wages even though the minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation.
It is in the middle -- where many four-year college graduates work -- that imports, overseas outsourcing and technology seems to be reducing U.S. employer demand most significantly, and thus restraining wages.
That is the kind of shift in the tectonic plates of the economy that produces political earthquakes.
读个博士好加薪
一个拥有四年本科学历的美国雇员的收入一般要比一个职责相当、而没有大学文凭的雇员高出很多──他们之间的收入差距高达45%。
接受教育确实有所回报。不过在如今的经济环境下，单有学士学位已经难以保证获得大幅度的加薪以抵消通货膨胀带来的影响了。
虽然有些毕业生的工资待遇优越，但在过去五年间，大学毕业生经通货膨胀调整后的平均工资有所下降。2000年（最近一次经济衰退期开始之前）至2005年（最新资料的截止时间）期间，唯一享受涨薪的人群是少部分拥有研究生学位的人。
想想看：尽管经济和生产力一直在显着增长，许多循规蹈矩、辛辛苦苦念完四年大学的雇员却没能前进一步。
怎么回事呢？劳动者分得的果实变小了，而公司利润占据的份额却变大了，但这种情况可能只是暂时的。更为长期的趋势是：劳动者分享的果实会越来越不平均。薪资上涨的大部分将被收入最高的雇员占有。
工资水平不均的情况在过去的二三十年就一直在不断加剧，并非只出现在布什执政期间。最初，中间收入水平的美国人薪酬增速快于底层人群，而高水平收入人群的薪酬增速高于中间收入人群，依此类推，并且它们之间的增长速度都是一致的。
但在过去十年，底层和中层之间的差距没有扩大，但高层与中层的收入距离却在不断拉大。获得商务、法律、医学等专业的研究生学位的雇员之间的收入差距远大于本科毕业生和高中毕业生之间的收入差距。加州大学伯克利分校的伊曼纽尔?塞茨(Emmanuel Saez)整理的纳税申报资料显示，不包括资本利得，美国收入最高的1%人口2004年的收入占美国人总收入的16%，而1984年只占到9%。
我个人认为，没有任何一份数据能就此提供完整的讯息。这张表内的资料只涉及现金工资，不包括医疗福利和退休金。如果这两部分也包括进去，这些通货膨胀调整后的数据大部分都会由负数变为正数。但收入不平等的情况不会消失。私营企业收入最高的20%的雇员其医疗保险是收入最低的20%的人的三倍，另外还有股票期权等--谁拿大部分的期权也是可想而知的。
现在的问题并不是劳动力市场上的赢家和输家之间的差距是否在扩大，而是为什么差距会扩大。而这个问题不再是“读书越多，挣钱越多”这么简单。在收入最高的那部分人群中，一些更复杂的因素在起作用。
这个问题可以从三个方面进行，每一方面都值得关注。首先，现在的高级管理人员、对冲基金经理和棒球运动员收入都很高，这种情况比我们上一辈那时候更容易被社会所接受。其次，世界在改变，使得第一第二名--不管是律师还是摇滚乐明星--比第19和第20名更值钱。科技创造了超级明星，奥普拉(Oprah)和地方电视的脱口秀主持人之间的收入差距比以前大得多。
第三方面是全球化及技术进步对供求的影响。在最顶端的部分，大幅增长的薪资表明市场对学历最高的那部分人的需求增长快于供给的增长。“金字塔顶端的那部分人的日子很好过，”哈佛大学劳动经济学家劳伦斯?卡茨(Lawrence Katz)说。“需求发生了变化，再说，大量复制类似人才是很困难的，我们没有能够尽快地增加此类人才的数量。”
无技能的移民和中层失业人员对底层人群数量的影响较大，宾馆、医疗护理、保安等行业对该层次劳动力的需求可能使得他们的薪水有所提升，尽管最低工资还赶不上通货膨胀的速度。
进口、外包和技术进步使得美国的雇主大大减少了对多由四年本科毕业生组成的中层人群的需求，导致该人群的薪资缩水。
这些经济构造板块的移动将会带来政治上的震荡。
David Wessel
