In 2022, 78.7 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.6 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 141,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Thats fucked up.
Am I reading that right? Out of all the people paid hourly, only ~0.2% were paid exactly minimum wage. Was everyone else paid more than min wage? Were any paid less?
My first job was at an amusement park in KC that paid $3.10 an hour, even though minimum wage was $3.25 (or $3.35). They did this through a seasonal employment exemption intended for farm workers.
When I was at college I needed to get a part time job during the semester. I interviewed with campus maintenance who paid a whopping $2.83 an hour through some kind of education exemption, and I’d have to be at work at 6am. I got a job at a convenience store instead for $4.25 or something and lived like a baller.
I remember when I could beat 3/6 LHE for more than minimum wage.
First job was $3.15/hr. Remember how excited I was when I got my first raise–all the way up to $3.80!
These two examples are quite different. Minimum wage is arguably, but not necessarily, good for the owners of capital.
A lack of antitrust is unequivocally bad for owners of capital as a whole. Anti trust laws and functioning regulatory regimes are not, as a whole, implemented to protect consumers and workers
More broadly, a government that can look at facts and evidence and pass sensible laws that address obvious problems is a clearly good for businesses. Does that exist in the US? Will it continue to exist for the next 10 years?
Markets are prices by financial experts. Do you think that finance nerds have a different perspective than that of this forum about the stability and future effectiveness of the US state?
I wouldn’t know how to approach this question in any objective way.
It’s pretty wild to me that “listening to what Powell says” has been a way better predictor of Fed policy than the market.
I don’t think this is breaking news, but commercial real estate appears to be fucked.
Buildings are less than 2/3rds full on their highest occupancy days.
How are we defining ‘full’ for an office building?
I wonder how much occupancy means in a world where companies are going to still pay for office space and ask employees to come into the office two or three times per week.
I would assume they know how many cards a company has distributed and can tell how many of those were used on a day. It may not be 100% accurate, they may not be up to date with layoffs etc, but it’s what they have. We gave up one of our floors last year because we weren’t using it enough. I’m sure we’re not going to be the only ones to do that.
Office is pretty fucked, but it is a relatively small percentage of commercial real estate. In very densely populated cities, there will be office to residential conversions and tear downs. Suburban office is truly mega super fucked, there is no alternative use.
Office stress isn’t a big enough dollar amount to mess up the larger economy, but it will severely impact property tax collections by local governments.
Stonks seem to be having a rough time.
Also, China stock exchange is lookin limited.
https://twitter.com/jasongoepfert/status/1754853873443836094
The S&P 500 was founded in 1957
That just shows how weird it is!
I’ve spoken several times ITT about the positive skewness of stock returns (i.e. the fact that overall market returns are driven by a small number of very high performing stocks). This is a major factor in why any given active investor is such an underdog to beat the market.
I would assume that most office buildings don’t have cards. So if you’re just looking at those, it’s a skewed sample.
For sure, I thought it was interesting how much they were dragging things upward currently. Last few months of 2023 were a nice rally fueled by small-cap which has slowed down in the new year but the inertia of the big boys are pulling us to new all-time highs still!
