Workers' Compensation: Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough

Workers' Compensation benefits are usually based on an individual's wages and limited by the State Average Weekly Wage (SAWW). Likewise, premiums paid by employers are also determined by payroll costs. As medical costs soar, wage are not keeping up with wages, therefore premiums must rise. The result is a push by employers to limit workers' compensation claims through regulation and statutory reforms. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.baltimoresun.com

The good news as Labor Day approaches: Jobs are returning. The bad news: Most of them pay lousy wages and provide low, if not nonexistent, benefits.

The trend toward lousy wages began before the Great Recession. According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, weak wage growth between 2000 and 2007, combined with wage losses for most workers since then, means that the bottom 60 percent of working Americans are earning less now than 13 years ago.

This is also part of the explanation for why the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover — from 12.3 percent in 2006 to around 14 percent this year. More than 35 million Americans now live below the poverty line.
Many of them have jobs. The problem is that these jobs just don't pay enough to lift their families out of poverty.

But wait a minute. Since 2000, productivity has grown by nearly 25 percent. That means the typical American worker is now producing a quarter more output than he or she did 13 years ago.
So if wages have flattened or declined for the bottom 60 percent, yet productivity has increased, where have the gains gone? Mostly to corporations and the very rich.

All of which gives some context to the strikes in recent weeks at fast-food chain stores, such as McDonald's, where workers are demanding a raise to $15 an hour from their current pay of $8 to $10 an hour. And the demonstrations and walkouts at Walmart stores, whose workers...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]