Trade and the American Worker: A Primer

 

U.S. workers' real compensation has risen:  While critics of NAFTA and the WTO say they have suppressed wages, growth in real compensation - wages plus benefits - has risen notably since 1993.  In the case of manufacturing workers, for instance, average real compensation grew at an average annual rate of 1.3% from 1993 to 2007, compared to 0.8% annually between 1979 and 1993.  (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

 

Most growth in compensation has gone to benefits:  Real wages have been relatively stagnant over the past decade, but total compensation has not.  As the Cato Institute's Daniel Ikenson writes, citing BEA data, "Benefits continue to be a large part of manufacturing compensation, and total compensation has been rising since the [2001] recession.  For manufacturing workers, real wages increased by a total of 4 percent between 2001 and 2005, while real benefits increased by 42 percent.  Compensation for manufacturing workers was up 11 percent, as opposed to 6 percent for the economy as a whole."  (Source: Cato Institute, "Thriving in a Global Economy," August 2007)