Pay Increase

[videogamesrock]

Just curious, has anyone over the past 10 years seen any significant pay increases? I'm just reflecting on what I have noticed in rental properties and the rents have gone up, the houses are costing more, and I'm seeing more and more roommate situations. When running numbers on tenants I do not see any increases in pay, just the fact they need to share living with more people to afford the housing.

My typical tenants are middle class. In about ten years I've seen rents go up about 50% and the cost of real estate has almost doubled. Just curious if we are seeing a top here. More pay of course would mean we did not top and rent increases will continue, and the same is with higher interest rates.

[inkleind]

Only ones I've earned from moving up or came from cola increases.

[videogamesrock]

Are you averaging 3%?

[yb1]

I am worried about automation/robots taking more and more jobs away. but to answer your question no. I am broke now and was broke a few years ago.

[videogamesrock]

I am worried about automation/robots taking more and more jobs away. but to answer your question no. I am broke now and was broke a few years ago.

3d printing will be the new manufacturing. But will create many fossil fuel jobs to supply automation.

[dfrecore]

If you look at unemployment over the last 10 years, it hasn't been low (don't look at the published U3 numbers, look at the U6 instead). That's a major factor. If unemployment is high, then the competition for labor is low, and wages are depressed (more people looking for jobs means companies can be pickier, employees have less bargaining power, fewer employees leave for better jobs, etc.).

Currently, the U6 number is 9.6% unemployment and in March 2010 it hit the peak of 17.1% So yes, it's about double of the "official" U3 number which is WAY off (but of course the government would rather publish that).

Here's a good place to look at it: U6 Unemployment Rate | MacroTrends

[kb4ns1]

I tend to get 2-3% COLA increases every couple of years, but it's never enough to even cover the increases in health insurance premiums, let alone offset the costs of everything else in the world going up.

[TrailRunr]

I've gotten 3% increases annually except during depths of the recession, but the price of everything else has gone up much faster especially healthcare. And I had to leave the HMO because they were cutting care left and right to save a few bucks so I paid more for a PPO. Even if expenses stayed even, I still made more in 2000 during the dotcom boom than this year. So yes, I'm backsliding every year since 2000 after adjusting for inflation and tax increases.

[socsci]

I am worried about automation/robots taking more and more jobs away. but to answer your question no. I am broke now and was broke a few years ago.

It is interesting that this genuine fear pops up all over in developed countries. People not so long ago had very little free time because they were working to feed each other then the industrial revolution happened and with it came lots of free time for sports, creativity and entertainment etc..
I'm of the opinion that automation will increase time for humans to pursue other interests and from that new types of work will be created.

[dfrecore]

I am worried about automation/robots taking more and more jobs away.

As automation takes away jobs, new jobs are formed. This is normal. It has happened since the beginning of time (obviously, not robots). Progress means that things are constantly changing. This can be good and bad. But really, go back 20, 50, 100, 1000 years, and show me something people did that did not see some kind of change to how it was done later.

For one example, cars took over the horse and buggy. Yes, we needed fewer horses, fewer people to take care of horses, no one to make buggies. Instead, those people left the horse & buggy market over the years, and started doing other things. And, more and more people started working to make cars. Not just making the cars, but making car parts, working at oil refineries, selling cars, etc. Lots of H&B jobs went away, and probably more jobs came in with the car business.

Look at farms. The US was hugely agricultural for hundreds of years. Then, the industrial revolution came about, and fewer and fewer people were needed on farms. Those people went and did other things. Their kids didn't go into the farm business to begin with, so there's attrition too (more people leaving an industry than coming into it).

My kids are looking at jobs that didn't exist 50 years ago. Graphic design, Cybersecurity.

The job I did when I worked didn't exist before the 1980's (ish). I was a stock plan administrator - for companies who gave stock options to their employees. Nobody had ever heard of it when I started doing it in the Silicon Valley in 1990. Most people hadn't ever heard of a stock option. Just before I started at one company, they had just finished using a punch-card system! They input info into a mainframe once a month with punchcards. I used a computer, with a DOS program, but got updates on sales daily via a fax machine, and input everything by hand. We switched to an automated system a couple of years later, with an updated program to boot, and I got daily downloads (which I had to take about 20 steps to get, until they updated a year later it and it would come automatically). As things changed, I did not have LESS work every day, I just got to spend more time doing other things that had been neglected. Or got new things added to my job description as laws changed and there was more reporting that had to get done.

I was also a 401(k) plan administrator. That name wasn't common either. My parents, who worked at a company with a pension, had never heard of a 401(k). But, as pensions started to die, pension admins went away, but 401(k) plan admins came into the picture.

I could go on and on with just my life. But if you look around, you will find that this is normal for most people. They aren't doing a job that even existed 50 years ago - or are doing it completely differently than it was done back then.