this is the Age of the Incredible Shrinking Everything. Home prices, the stock market, G.D.P., corporate profits, employment: they’re all a fraction of what they once were. Yet amid this carnage there is one thing that, surprisingly, has continued to grow: the paycheck of the average worker. Companies are slashing payrolls: 3.6 million people have lost their jobs since the recession started, with half of those getting laid off in just the past three months. Yet average hourly wages jumped almost four per cent in the past year. It’s harder and harder to find and keep a job, but if you’ve got one you may well be making more than you did twelve months ago.

This combination of rising unemployment and higher wages seems improbable. But, as it turns out, it’s what history would lead us to expect. Even during the early years of the Great Depression, manufacturing workers actually saw their real wages rise, and wage cuts have been scarce in every recession since. Oil and wheat prices may rise and fall instantaneously to reflect supply and demand, but wages are “sticky”: even when the economy goes bad, it takes a lot to make them fall.

It’s not because businesses are generous that wages are sticky; it’s because employers are worried. In part, bosses are afraid of what economists call “adverse selection”: if they cut wages, it’s the least productive workers who would be the most likely to stay, while the best workers would start looking elsewhere. (Even in a weak economy, businesses still compete for talent.) In a 1997 study of almost two hundred employers, the economists Carl Campbell and Kunal Kamlani found that the threat of losing their best employees was a major reason that bosses didn’t cut wages.

Even more important is the impact of wage cuts on morale. After the 1990-91 recession, the economist Truman Bewley interviewed managers and labor officials at more than two hundred companies and found that most believed that wage cuts wreck employee morale and eat away at productivity. Whatever money they’d save by cutting wages, bosses assume, would be cancelled out by the decline in effort and the breakdown of trust that wage cuts would create. Not everyone believes this: in the past month, both Hewlett-Packard and FedEx have announced plans for pay cuts. But generally, when sales and profits drop, wages aren’t cut, even in firms undergoing layoffs. Of course, layoffs don’t exactly help morale, but, as one of the bosses that Bewley interviewed coldly put it, they “get the misery out the door.” Cutting wages keeps the misery around.

Today’s sticky wages aren’t just the result of custom, though. They’ve also stayed high because of the most unusual aspect of this recession: even as the economy has cratered, American workers have become more productive, not less. Productivity—how much output workers produce per hour of work—is the key to a healthy economy. Historically, productivity has been “procyclical”: it rose during booms and fell during recessions. But not this time. Even as the economy did a cliff dive in the last quarter, productivity rose an impressive 3.1 per cent. And since, in theory, workers get paid more the more productive they are, their increased productivity has helped them avoid pay cuts.

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In times as grim as these, stable wages and higher productivity seem like good things. But they come at a price. The reason that companies have remained so productive despite the slowdown has a lot to do with one of the most celebrated efficiency gains of recent years: the so-called just-in-time economy. In past recessions, companies often delayed firing people, because, in their uncertainty over the precise state of their business, they preferred to keep people around rather than go to the trouble of firing them and having to hire replacements later. In economist-speak, companies “hoarded labor.” But during the past two decades companies have got significantly better at responding quickly to changes in the marketplace. Retailers carry less inventory; manufacturers have shorter lead times on production. This made the system as a whole more efficient, and each individual worker more productive. But it has also made redundant workers more expendable, and labor hoarding a thing of the past.

Bad times have always meant job losses, of course. But what’s distinctive about the speed and depth of today’s job cuts is that, even before the recession hit, American companies were, by historical standards, running lean operations. While the economy grew at a respectable rate for much of this decade, hiring did not. So one might have thought that companies would have had less room to slash payrolls, since they were already relatively slim. Instead, the same companies that were slow to hire after the last recession have been fast to fire during this one. G.D.P., after all, actually grew for much of 2008. Yet every month companies were cutting jobs. And after the credit crisis erupted, in September, companies wasted no time: as fast as consumer spending was plummeting, businesses were cutting payrolls even more aggressively. Companies have always wanted to do more with less; nowadays it’s a positive obsession.

For the employed, then, this recession may be less than awful—if, that is, you can forget about the value of your home and your 401(k). But the very factors that benefit people with jobs—higher productivity and sticky wages—make prospects bleaker for those without them. That’s one reason that it was important for the stimulus package to extend and increase unemployment benefits, as well as create jobs. We’re a more productive, more efficient economy than ever, but that’s cold comfort when you’re on the dole.

這是一個一切都縮水的時代，房地產價格，股票市場，GDP，公司利潤，就業率：這些通通都變成了曾經的一小部分。令人驚奇的是，在這場大衰退中，有一項東西繼續在增長，那就是熟練工人的薪水。公司縮減了工資名單：自從經濟衰退開始，已經有360萬人失業，其中一半人是在剛剛過去的三個月里丟掉了工作。然而，平均每小時的工資在去年增長了差不多4%。找工作變得越來越難，但是如果你已經有一份工作的話，你可能比十二個月以前掙得更多。

這種高失業率和高工資的組合看起來有些不可思議，但是，這是被歷史所證明的事實。即使在上世紀的大蕭條時期，產業工人的工資也是在上漲的，在衰退時減薪是罕見的。石油和小麥的價格會隨著供求關系的變化而變化，但是工資是“剛性的”：即使當經濟形勢不好的時候，想要讓降薪也是很困難的。

工資的“剛性”并不是因為商人慷慨，這是因為雇主擔心被經濟學家稱為的“逆向選擇”：一旦降薪，越平庸的工人越可能留下，而越是出色的工人越可能跳槽。（即使是在經濟形勢不好的時候，商業的競爭就是人才的競爭。）在 1997年的一項研究中，經濟學家Carl Campbell 和Kunal Kamlani 發現老板不去降薪最大的原因就是怕失去他們最好的員工。

更重要的是降薪會影響士氣。經歷1990到1991年的衰退之后，經濟學家Truman Bewley 和超過200家公司的經理和人事主管面談之后發現大多數人認為降薪會有損士氣并最終影響生產。老板們認為降薪省下來的開支會被降薪所引發的工作效率和信任的減損所抵消。并不是每個老板都相信這一套，上個月Hewlett-Packard 和 FedEx 兩家公司就宣布降薪。但是，一般來說當銷售和利潤下降的時候，即使去裁員也不能降薪。當然，裁員對士氣也沒好處，但是正如一個老板Bewley在采訪中所說的那樣“裁員的苦惱在公司外，降薪的苦惱在公司內部。”

雖然如今工資的剛性并不僅僅是慣例的結果，水平的工資是又有經濟衰退期不尋常的景象所致：經濟衰退時，美國工人的工作效率更高了，而不是更低。生產效率（工人每小時的產出）是健康經濟的關鍵。從歷史的角度看，工作效率是循環的，經濟繁榮是增長，經濟衰退時下降。但這次不是，即使經濟在上個季度跳水的時候，生產效率還是增長了3.1%。理論上講，工人效率越高工資越高，正是生產效率的提高避免了減薪。

在如此嚴酷的時期內，穩定的工資和高效率也是好的。但這也是有代價的，公司在衰退中保持高效率和近年來取得的一項成果有關：它被稱為“及時經濟”(“just-in-time economy”)，在以往的衰退中，公司常常推遲裁員，因為他們對公司的狀況還不是很確定，他們把員工留下來以免陷入今天裁員明天就要雇人代替的麻煩之中。用經濟學術語叫公司儲備勞動力。但是在過去二十年間，公司對市場變化采取更為迅速的反應會更好一些。零售商少存貨，制造商縮短制造周期。這使系統作為一個整體更加有效率，每個工人更加有工作效率。但這使得多余的工人越發昂貴，存蓄勞動力成為過去。

當然，衰退期意味著失業。但是區別在于裁員速度和深度，以前當經濟衰弱襲來，美國公司都保持最少雇員的運轉。而經濟在這個十年大部分都保持了增長。但是工作卻沒有增長。所以有人會認為公司們已經沒有空間在縮減他們的工資單了，因為他們已經很“瘦”了。相反，上一次衰退事裁員速度很慢的公司這次裁員都很快。畢竟，GDP在08年實際上增長了，但是每月都有公司在裁員。信用危機九月爆發之后，公司們沒有浪費時間，和消費者縮減花費一樣快，公司裁員甚至更為猛烈。公司想要做更多，如今這是一個積極的思想。

對于那些有工作的人來說，這次經濟衰退還沒那么可怕，至少可以讓你忘卻房子和汽油的價格。但是正是使得有工作的人收益的因素——高效率和剛性工資——使得失業者的前景更加暗淡。這也正是增加失業者福利和創造就業機會重要的原因。我們比以往更有效率，但是對于那些領取失業救濟金的人來說起不到任何安慰作用。

金融危機來襲，為什么老板們選擇裁員而不是降薪？為什么經濟大蕭條薪水反漲？著篇文章告訴你答案。