Oh, How the Wages Have Fallen

Most Americans have caught on by now that the economic implosion that rocked the national and global economy over the past two years hasn’t meant good things for their personal finances. But when it comes to paycheck patterns, it turns out that wages have been on the decline for much longer than that — try a decade, for example. –KA

MarketWatch:

Median weekly wages, when adjusted for inflation, fell slightly for both high school and college graduates from 2000 to 2009, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

“The story is often told that college graduates have done well and everyone else has not. But that’s not true,” said Josh Bivens, an economist at EPI.

For high school graduates, median inflation-adjusted wages were $626 per week in 2009, compared with $629 in 2000, according to EPI. If you assume a worker gets paid for a full year, that adds up to $32,552 in 2009, down from $32,708 in 2000.

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