Scott Littlehale

bsky.app/profile/slit...

Charts from Tableau data dashboard - link to the page is in the post. Screen readers hopefully can read the data off of the web page better than I can describe it. Generally, shows the average annual pay of Los Angeles County-domiciled residential framing contractors is worse than other construction sub-sectors. Also shows no increase over 20 years in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Screen shot of BLS QCEW data viewer for Residential Framing Contractors, L.A. County California, 2020-2024. (source link is in the post). Average weekly wages, in nominal dollars, increased by only $148 since 2019, or 18%. The CPI-W for LA-Anaheim increased 20.8% 2019-2024. See https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/CPI/CPICalculator/CpiCalculator.aspx

Belatedly, here's the link to the data viz. public.tableau.com/shared/WR2B5...
5 years of data (in nominal $s) direct from BLS can be accessed here: data.bls.gov/cew/apps/tab...
The CCCE is a project I've been working to stand up with consultants' help. It'll have a website within a few months.

Yes, I guess I forgot this time. I need to get back to my PC to get the link to this customized version of the chart.
But I can tell you right now that the data source is BLS’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), adjusted as described, by the CPI-W, shared via the CCCE’s Tableau page.

The totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at BLS, sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau. For a full statement opposing this move, read:

Trump’s first BLS Commissioner, Bill Beach, calls today’s firing groundless and dangerous.
www.friendsofbls.org/updates/2025...

makes sense... timing is important and 11 am probably isn't great timing

Surprised to see that this post got more engagement (meaning a few likes) on the Bad Place.
(I don’t usually post there, but I wanted to experiment with this one…)
I genuinely think the facts described are relevant and also little-known.

If there ever was a “major question” requiring more specific delegation … and yet …

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

UCR press release clip: "Mahutga et al.’s paper additionally explains that the growing ratio of LDC suppliers to lead-firm “buyers” increased the ability of leading firms to squeeze price concessions from LDC suppliers, worsening the effect of LDC imports on unionization. Mahutga says that rich democracies should be concerned that workers in LDCs are bearing this cost in greatly lowered wages and substandard working conditions because this ultimately undermines unions, and wages and working conditions, in the more affluent countries. A third explanation for null effects in prior research is that scholars failed to account for the buffering effect of labor market institutions, such as nationwide wage coordination and union-run unemployment insurance, or Ghent, systems. However, Mahutga et al.’s study suggests that GVCs caused lowered unionization even in the most union-friendly countries, although the effect was smaller. Mahutga hopes these findings will enable researchers to grapple with the effects of GVCs more realistically, and better inform policymakers to improve quality of life in both developed and less-developed countries."

The UCR press release ("Globalization of production undermines unions, study finds
Sociologists link union decline to low-cost suppliers in less developed countries") is here:
news.ucr.edu/articles/202...

30 years after @healeyparera.bsky.social, Jeff Cowie, and I worked on a project on organized labor responses to regional econ integration deals (in what my brain remembers as a remodeled attic at Duke U.), the ASR published an article with evidence that unions weren't irrational for being concerned.

Here is a better link to our Tableau dashboard for California Construction wage and employment data ... you'll be able to access the latest update instead of the one from 7 months ago
public.tableau.com/app/profile/...

Redistribution or govt spending don’t make equality, unionization does

In the housing space The Groups are treated as a uniquely progressive rot, but centrists have their own Groups they reflexively defer to: realtors, large SFH builders, landlords, and utilities.

Many of these centrist Groups have positions that are odds with climate-friendly housing abundance.

It’s even worse than that because data center construction is part of the office category. These are nominal SAAR

Producer Price Index by Industry: New Office Building Construction Producer Price Index by Industry: New Office Building Construction

Which deflator do you use for office construction?
This one?
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU23...

A graph of US office construction shrinking from $60B to $28B

Data released yesterday shows real US office construction continues to sink lower & lower and is now approaching levels not seen since the worst of the Great Recession

Remote work, slower hiring, and high interest rates all continue to weigh on the sector

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

p.s. I appreciate the interest!

I have to go to a union meeting now, but I will circle back with you offline. send me your email address via DM and I'll connect you with the person who has the scripts.

has Mark put old ways behind and totally logged off?! (if so, good for him!)

great! I welcome comments. Most of the data and methods are replicable for other states. We've been updating some of those data here. (caveat: the tableau charts are not very mobile screen friendly)
public.tableau.com/views/Califo...

Mark, you going to take that?! ["fight! fight! fight!..."]

By all means, let the guy who told the secretary of state of Georgia "I just want to find 11,780 votes" make decisions about whose numbers are wrong.

Turkey’s Erdogan Fires Statistics Chief After Record Inflation The president of the Turkish statistical institute, Sait Dincer, was removed from office and replaced by Erhan Cetinkaya, who had been deputy president of Turkey’s Banking Regulation and Supervision A...

um. www.wsj.com/world/middle...

Meanwhile the BLS *does* have serious problems related to declining data integrity — because Trump has deprived it of resources. Hiring freezes, early retirements, “fork” departures etc. have left the agency so thinly staffed that field offices are closing.

also the argument here is that downward revisions under Biden were evidence that fix was in for Biden, but downward revisions under Trump are evidence that the fix is in against Trump?

Picture of Tableau dashboard chart of average annual pay for 6-digit NAICS industries for L.A. County, spanning 2004-2023. Source URL link to Tableau dashboard, where a screen reader hopefully can help: https://public.tableau.com/shared/55D5FZZHW?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

In L.A. county, average annual pay for residential construction framing contractors' employees is the lowest of any detailed industry within the construction sector, and that pay has not risen in inflation-adjusted terms in 20 years.
And yet -- L.A. needs to build how much more housing??!!

Big news in today's #jobs report are the revisions. The labor market is much weaker than originally reported the last two months. While payrolls grew 73k in July, May and June data were revised down a total of 258k to 19k and 14k, respectively, bringing 3-month average growth down to 35k.
#EconSky

How does recent growth compare to recent years? Economy added 1.54 million jobs over 12 months to July 2025.

Weaker than any year to July since 2010 other than 2020.

Job growth is decelerating as huge amounts of policy uncertainty from POTUS reduces businesses’ willingness to invest:
+128K/mo over most-recent 12 months
+81K/mo over most-recent 6 months
+35K/mo over most-recent 3 months
+73K this past month