Commentary —

Figures Don’t Lie… But

They Do Fib A Little

Owners prosper,

Rarely me;

From my

Productivity.

In case you missed it, the winder edition of The Connecticut Economy is out. Perhaps you don’t subscribe. That would be understandable, since it runs $50 a year, and the only photos are of the cute authors. Plenty of charts, though. Thus it does not show up on most Nutmeg coffee tables.

That’s too bad. You might like to see where some of your taxes go.

The journal is heavily subsidized by UConn, whose economists write it, and by business, and by other state agencies. One surmises that its mission is to make rich people feel good. No labor economists need apply.

For example in this issue, which talks much about productivity, there is joy that greater efficiencies in manufacturing have released labor for other duties, such as services. Another term for “releasing,” of course, is “layoffs.” And another term for “services” is “lower-paid jobs.” This subject, you won’t be surprised to learn, is not explored. Neither is the question of how much of our rising manufacturing wage is due to lower-wage factories moving south. That also “releases” workers for still-lower-wage jobs. It raises the average manufacturing wage too, because only the higher-paying jobs remain. It doesn’t mean anyone got a raise. And in Connecticut, manufacturing is the only wage we bother to measure.

By chance the Hartford Courant just reported on a related matter. It seems that some producers are now hiring part-time night shift workers from other companies as moonlighters. That’s smart. If their own workers stayed late for overtime, they’d get time-and-a-half. Who says there are no more workers out there to hire? Just wait ‘til their credit card bills pile up.

The journal also suggests, as economists do, that productivity boosts wages. Well, it’s true that wages won’t go up much without more productivity, but being more productive doesn’t mean you get paid more. That’s where unions come in. Left to their own devices, business owners will mostly pocket productivity gains for themselves. UConn economists generally don’t upset their private clients with that sort of talk.

In fact the whole subject of productivity grows more intriguing by the day. How do economists count the added effort that we customers now put in? Take ATM machines. Do they count as making banks and tellers more productive? If so, do tellers get pay raises, or layoffs?

And now some supermarkets want us to check out our own groceries. Will we get a price break for that? Will store clerks get raises because fewer of them will be needed? Right! What really happens is that clerks are cut first, making lines so long that we prefer to check ourselves out.

Then there are the service centers which we all must call from time to time. Is it productivity when we have to wait on hold forever for an operator, just so there are no extra operators on duty? Our UConn friends don’t enter that thicket either.

They do, though, mention the remarkable pay scale jump enjoyed by our state’s finance industry. What they don’t analyze is the portion of that scale which is due to all the new high-paid employees moving into Stamford. We’re left to assume, rather, that the new scale is due to raises for Nutmeggers who were already here.

In short, while Connecticut’s economy is now dandy, there is plenty of bleakness too. But you’ll never learn that from our tax-supported professors. They’re too eager to maintain cozy relationships with outside business.

(Bill Collins, a former mayor of Norwalk, is a syndicated columnist.)