As I write about the regional economy and commercial real estate market of different metro areas around the country, I am struck by a little-noted trend. In most parts of the country, while the widely quoted survey of business establishments showed that employment was higher in October 2013 than it had been in October 2012, the household-based data, also from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows a decrease. I’ll give one example. In metro Atlanta, the establishment survey shows the number of wage and salary jobs increased by 62,200 (2.6%) from October 2012 to October 2013. But household-based data shows employment fell by 12,200 (0.5%) during the same period, and the labor force fell by 36,835 (1.3%). I’m seeing the same thing all over the country. The establishment survey is considered more accurate, but it is often late to show a sharp turn in the economy, and is subject to large revisions when those sharp turns occur. And it does not include the self-employed, a growing share of the workforce.

In most metro areas the household-based data for October showed employment is falling when compared with a year earlier, but the labor force is falling even faster, which is why unemployment is edging down. At the national level, the sharp turn to the negative for in October was camouflaged by ongoing employment and labor force growth in some places, including California, New York, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, the Dakotas, Utah. Those gains balanced the job losses elsewhere. Recently released national data for December, however, shows a bigger decline. I suspect most of the country is losing jobs again, a trend likely to make its way here eventually. The U.S. economy, and in some ways the global economy, is depending on selling Americans more than their employers pay them. This false economy was unsustainable and has been kept of life support, barely, for five years.

According to MSNBC  "GM has revealed that its new CEO Mary Barra stands to earn as much as $4.4 million in her first year on the job. That’s if she collects on the full $2.8 million that’s set aside as part of a short-term incentive plan. (She also could collect a potential $1 million in a new stock offering.) But Barra’s base salary is $1.6 million — a full $100,000 less than outgoing CEO Dan Akerson earned in 2012."

If shifting to female leadership reduces executive pay and frees up money for dividends to shareholders, I say go for it. The pace of decrease ought to be greater than $100,000 per change at the top, however, and not just apply to the CEO. If there is some equally capable person willing to do your job for less money, you are overpaid. Such as been the attitude for everyone but those at the top for 30 years. But it works both ways. And as for the rest of us getting a better deal, whatever works.

When Newsday reported that the East Side Access project for the Long Island Railroad, already years late and nearly double the original budget, would take yet another year and cost even more money to complete, what did that make me think of? Unfortunately, and I hope it’s not the same thing, I thought of the construction of the Shoreham Nuclear power plant in the 1970s and 1980s, milked by Long Island’s grifter culture to the detriment of non-grifter residents of Nassau and Suffolk Counties and the entire state.

According to a 1985 report by 60 Minutes as cited by the Associated Press (I remember watching it and was able to Google it up), “unions controlled by organized crime helped stretch out construction time to 15 years and add to the $4 billion cost overruns of Long Island's Shoreham nuclear power plant.” Among the tactics – theft of materials and equipment, and destroying completed work so it would have to be done again. A whistleblower “said he witnessed sabotage and saw workers perform the same task four or five times, just to stretch out work.” He later left the job after he was nearly killed twice. The utility, the Long Island Lighting Company, didn’t care because it had been guaranteed “cost-plus” rate increases by the State of New York at the time the plant was approved, and because the money was all borrowed. It’s nearly 30 years later, and Nassau and Suffolk County residents and businesses are still paying for that particular crime.

AMIRI BARAKA: "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed