The decline in real wages in the USA 2009 – 2012 (2 charts)

from David Ruccio

According to the National Employment Law Project [pdf], for the period from 2009 to 2012:

• real median hourly wages declined by 2.8 percent, averaged across all occupations;

• lower-wage and mid-wage occupations saw significantly bigger declines in their real median wages (by 3 percent or more) thandid higher-wage occupations (by less than 2 percent); and

• real median wages fell by 5 percent or more in 5 of the top 10 lower-wage occupations: restaurant cooks, food preparation workers, home health aides, personal care aides, and maids and housekeepers.

The overall decline of wages is even more striking when we take into account the fact the productivity rose by 4.5 percent over the same 2009-2012 period.

As Felix Salmon concludes,

capital is taking more than 100% of real productivity gains, with labor steadily losing out. This, I fear, is the New