The U.S. economy has been growing for quite some time and has even been producing jobs. Unfortunately, that job growth has been consistently inconsistent and the word you hear most often on the lips of economists describing the recovery is ‘uneven.’ The Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic Indicators fell in April 2011, one of only two times the LEI has declined since March 2009 (the other time was in June 2010). It looks like continued overall growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) is on the cards but that growth will be spastic. One of the big problems, as pointed out by MEJ Economic Analyst Anne Wenzel of Econosystems.com, is the fact that personal incomes are growing even more slowly than the GDP. Employee compensation only increased by 1% during the first quarter of this year, while real GDP growth is estimated at 1.8%. If workers’ pay is growing more slowly that the overall economy, that is going to slow growth all by itself.

Long ago, Henry Ford was smart enough to realize the profits that are inherent in paying his workers enough so that they could afford to buy the cards they helped make. That lesson seems to have been forgotten. One of the reasons for the uneven and sluggish economic recovery we’ve been enjoying is the fact that our consumers, whose consumption is close to two-thirds of the overall economy, aren’t getting paid enough wages to keep that up. That is reflected in The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index, for example, which is sitting at historically low levels anyway, fell in May to 60.8 points from 66.0 in April, as consumers grew more apprehensive about business conditions and their income prospects. Meanwhile, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, small business owners are growing increasingly pessimistic as well. All indications seem to be that what recovery we had has slowed, at best, or stuttered to a stop in a worst case scenario.