Waiting for a mega-payday

I ran across a new word when reading a white paper published by IHS, a consultancy that provides “technical information, tools, and operational and advisory services” to help its customers make critical business decisions: Mega-payday. This might sound like the day a winner cashes in a winning Mega Millions lottery ticket, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

In working up some strategy tips to help business-to-consumer companies do a better job at marketing to their clients, IHS looked closely at pay cycles. “Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in America is paid on Friday,” the report, Payroll Cycle Tracker, states. Government assistance programs tend to issue checks on the first day of each month, and aren’t tied to any specific day of the week. IHS also analyzed pay frequency to determine the number of people who are paid weekly, every two weeks, twice per month, and monthly.

The term mega-payday refers to any day of the year that first-of-the-month government assistance checks are issued on a Friday, thereby coinciding with the paydays of half of the population paid 26 times each year. The upshot is that, on some days of the year, such as Sundays and federal holidays, nobody receives a paycheck; on mega-paydays, 90 million people get paid. To a retailer, understanding this sort of thing can have a big influence on planning inventory levels, promotions, and price discounts. A retailer in a well-to-do area probably needs consistent inventory levels from one week to the next, but stores in impoverished areas would be better off to increase inventories shortly before each month starts.

So far, so good, but the details in the report are more than a little disturbing. It has to do with the reason that this information is valuable.

“Today, more consumers are living paycheck-to-paycheck than ever before,” the report states. It quotes another study, one published by the Brookings Institute, that found that nearly one third of U.S. households consume their entire paycheck every pay period. No short-term savings. No long-term savings. No umbrella for a rainy day. “Each payday provides consumers with a brief window to make purchases until their next paycheck arrives,” it says. The number of people relying on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program doubled in the last decade and is now at an all-time high.

It’s not hard to find evidence that people with the lowest incomes have been getting squeezed for decades. Income data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the last great decade for income growth was the 1960s, when incomes across all income brackets increased a minimum of 36 percent (adjusted for inflation). From that era until the 1990s, the wealthiest 5 percent of the population experienced income growth nearly 20 percent every decade, while the rest fell behind. The third and fourth quintiles grew between 11 and 16 percent per decade, while those closer to the bottom, the first and second, quintiles fell to single-digit increases each decade.

The culprits are many. Too much focus on college educations, not enough on nuts-and-bolts vocations. Too few skilled and semi-skilled workers to fill the many job vacancies that exist. Too few people who understand how rewarding a career in manufacturing can be. All of these have been eroding our competitive edge for decades. Meanwhile, the spread of technology to low-wage countries has been helping many overseas manufacturers get into better competitive positions. For decades. Thus the steady exodus of manufacturing jobs.

In 1970, manufacturers made up 26 percent of the U.S. workforce. Today manufacturing represents just 9 percent of the U.S. workforce.

Reversing this trend is the first step in reversing the other one.