USA Today treated its readers to a story about the crisis that is coming due to a shortage of utility line workers. According to the article, utility companies won't be able to keep the juice flowing because there aren't enough workers to maintain and repair electricity lines. Well, in the United States, we have what is called a "market economy." In a market economy, shortages are supposed to lead to an increase in the price of the item that is being inadequately supplied, in this case utillity line workers. This means that we should expect to see sharply rising wages for utlity line workers. The article tells us that they are relatively well-paid, with an average annual pay of $75,000, but tells us nothing about the rate of increase in this pay. A quick look at pay for utility workers, approximately one-fifth of whom would be line workers, shows that their average hourly pay fell by 1.2 percent in real terms over the last year. It has risen by just 1.0 percent since 2000. While the pay for line workers may be doing somewhat better than the average for utlity workers as a whole, these data imply that line workers' wages can't be rising too rapidly, unless pay for other workers in the sector is plummeting. In short, there is no shortage of line workers. This sounds like a case where utlity executives have adopted a strategy where they don't want to pay enough to get the necessary workforce, which would lower corporate profit and CEO pay. They will then whine about worker "shortages" when people are forced to go without electricity. The media should be exposing a strategy that is putting the health and well-being of the country in danger, not cooperating with utlity company executives by spreading stories that are clearly not true.
--Dean Baker
