"Gary R Coffman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 12:42:20 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
"Gary R Coffman" wrote in message
.. .
A doubling of job seekers in the marketplace can do that.

I suppose it could, but did it? There was a lot of discussion about it in
the late '70s, but the idea was pretty well dismissed because there was
no
correspondance between unemployment and the numbers of women enterring
the
workforce. The correspondance that was a lot clearer was the decline of
unions.

Well now, I don't think housewives showed up in the unemployment stats
until after they got an outside job, then *lost it*. So the initial influx
of women
into the workforce wouldn't have been reflected in unemployment
statistics.
They'd have shown up in employment statistics, though, and they did.

That influx of labor meant that pressure to increase wages was relieved at
the same time there was a greater amount of money per household chasing
available goods. So prices rose while individual incomes didn't rise at a
corresponding rate. The end result, a man alone could no longer earn
enough to keep up with the Joneses (as both Mr and Mrs Jones were
now working).

Once the two wage earner household became the norm, and prices settled
to what two wage earners could afford (remember that prices reflect what
the market will bear, not necessarily what the product cost to produce),
the
single wage earner household was screwed. Unless the single wage earner
was far above average, his household would be relatively poor compared
to the two wage earner household.

Gary


You're doing back-porch economics here, but it's easy to test. If what
you're saying was true, it would show up as a decline in GDP per capita. But
there was no such decline.

Ed Huntress