Kudlow: Real Wage Growth Rate

Over at EconoSpeak, I document that Lawrence Kudlow is guilty of:

the Secretary Snow standard – the most reliable indicator of employment growth is the survey that gives the larger number for the month just reported. Kudlow can always be counted on if you’re looking for serial dishonesty.

It is worse than that:

In the October jobs report, average hourly wages for non-management workers increased 3.8 percent, well above inflation.

It is true that nominal wages were 3.78% higher than they were as of October 2006 but we do not know the October CPI index yet. We can note that from September 2006 to September 2007, real wages rose by 1.2%. But as our chart shows, this real wage series has shown a lot of noise but little upward drift. Why did I choose a four year period? Read what Kudlow said:

Looking back over four years, from the middle of 2003 when President Bush’s tax cuts took effect, the economy has created 8.6 million new jobs. Presently, non-farm payrolls in the U.S. stand at 138.5 million, a new record high. The unemployment rate today is a low 4.7 percent. And total civilian employment stands at 146 million, just shy of the record high. In fact, when you look at the October jobs report, it appears that employment is speeding up, not slowing down.

Really? I guess Larry has no clue as to what’s been happening to the employment to population ratio. Or maybe he does but he does not mind lying to National Review readers as he considers them to be stupid little children who deserve to be lied to.