The recently released employment situation report contained a wealth of detail concerning worker productivity, worker education level, and income tables. Let’s first take a look at productivity. Worker productivity rose 6.9% in the 4th quarter of 2009 while unit labor costs (the actual measure of efficiency of the workforce) fell 5.9%. This means that companies are doing more with fewer employees. There is good news and bad news here. The good news is that economic analysts generally believe these favorable observations on worker productivity and improving costs is a cyclical phenomenon and hence presages an improvement in corporate profitability and a better jobs situation. The bad news is that companies, which already may be reluctant to hire, would be happy to “ride this wave” until they are either hurt competitively or start to lose some of the fewer, valued workers they have. It should be obvious at this point that adding employees will diminish this favorable cost dynamic and so companies want to be very certain of the timing before doing so. It could take a while. But this is all sort of a steady state analysis. We have a workforce which numbers around 154 mil people and is growing at 1% a year. If we need jobs for those currently out of work and for those entering the labor force, the best position, by far, is to be able to operate in a steadily improving economy. That is a jobs program!

There were also some excellent statistics on the educational level of workers and incomes associated with those levels. Approximately 33 mil employees (21% of the labor force) have a college degree or better. These workers earn around $59,000/year compared with $38,500 for the overall labor force. The news gets even better. The top earners among this better educated group take home about $150,000/year compared with the top earners amongst the general workforce at about $90,000. So the longer-term prospects look very good for those who enter the workforce with a degree and, indeed, for those who continue to pursue their education.

Note: most of this information came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics