Our Long-Running & Continuing Broad-Based Wage Stagnation

[amborin]

2014 Continues a 35-Year Trend of Broad-Based Wage Stagnation

By Elise Gould | February 19, 2015

Last year was yet another year of poor wage growth for American workers.

With few exceptions, real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages fell or stagnated for workers across the wage spectrum between 2013 and 2014—even for those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree.

...... hourly wages for the vast majority of American workers have been flat or falling. And ever since 1979, the vast majority of American workers have seen their hourly wages stagnate or decline. This is despite real GDP growth of 149 percent and net productivity growth of 64 percent over this period.....these economic gains have largely bypassed the vast majority.....

snip

Long-term trends suggest that low- and middle-wage men have fared comparably poorly, and that wage gaps between the top and the middle, and between the top and the bottom, among both men and women have expanded continuously over the last three-and-a-half decades (Gould 2014).....

snip

The stagnation of hourly wages is the most important economic issue facing most American families, and most of our key economic challenges hinge on whether or not hourly wages for the vast majority grow.....

http://www.epi.org/publication/stagnant-wages-in-2014/

For most workers, real wages have barely budged for decades

after adjusting for inflation, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power as it did in 1979, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then....

....Wage stagnation has been a staple of economic analysis and commentary for a while now.....

....What gains have been made, have gone to the upper income brackets. Since 2000, usual weekly wages have fallen 3.7% (in real terms) among workers in the lowest tenth of the earnings distribution, and 3% among the lowest quarter.....

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

[UglyGreed]

1. But things are looking

up

[-none]

2. The only thing going up are the prices on the stuff we have to buy.

[UglyGreed]

3. Indeed

[amborin]

4. kicking

[Todays_Illusion]

5. It isn't mere stagnation it has been deliberate wage suppression and it officially began in 1976.

With the E.I.T.C. creation instead of a minimum wage increase, that means not only that taxes were used to increase profits for the lowest wage payers but to undermine Social Security system so the workers are also poorer when they retire.

Then there is privatization of government services which is tax theft for profits plus wage suppression.
The tax money is still spent, there has been no savings, but now a cut is taken for profit for the contractor and the workers are paid much less and with no or greatly reduced benefits.

Third of course is the use of illegal immigrant labor, for union busting during the early Reagan Adm., breaking the Farm Workers unions and the meat cutter's unions. followed by the later round of illegal immigrant workers during the housing/building boom which reduced all the pay for the building trade workers.

To that add the H1B visa workers used to suppress the tech wages and add that to the wage suppression conspiracy by the largest tech companies, Apple, Microsoft, Google, EBay, Amazon, etc.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2491016/it-personnel/steve-jobs-was--central-figure--in-silicon-valley-hiring-case--judge-says.html

In addition throughout the recession and with all the illegal immigrant workers there continued to be H2A agriculture workers and H2B unskilled non agriculture workers.

Not some accidental "wage stagnation," we have been subjected to deliberate wage suppression.

[Live and Learn]

6. Productivity rises have translated into lower paying jobs and higher paid CEOs. nt