[Jorge]

the unemployment rate doesn't count a person who is offshored from a 60K tech jobs and is working at Lowes now for half that.

Stats show that average wages are UP, not down.

"For the 12 months ending in December, workers' wages and benefits grew by 3.8 percent, compared with a 3.4 percent increase in 2002. Wages and salaries in 2003 rose 2.9 percent - the same-size increase as the year before. Benefits rose by 6.3 percent in 2003, up from a 5 percent rise in 2002."

[oceanview]

remove government workers, and private sector workers making over $200K from the stats and then talk to me. why? because government workers have built in wage increases in their contracts, and in the private sector, when IBM offshores a few thousand people making $60-70K, the executives all get nice bonuses for doing so.

unless you remove those two groups from the figures, the wage numbers don't mean anything with regards to what is happening to the private sector middle class.

[lelio]

Stats show that average wages are UP, not down.

Are those the same sort of stats that show that the average high tech job in WA state has a $97k average compensation? And that those involved in "software" make over $212k a year on average?

Or put it this way: what's the average compensation for an HP employee considering that Carly gets a $10M bonus and lays off thousands?

[templar]

"For the 12 months ending in December, workers' wages and benefits grew by 3.8 percent, compared with a 3.4 percent increase in 2002.

Factor in inflation and that is a loss of real wages. I don't know what the government is claiming inflation is now days (I consider their figures phony and pay little attention to them), but I keep very accurate records (for tax purposes, I'm self employed) and my base costs for living in Feb 2004 were slightly above 10 percent higher than Feb 2003. By basic costs, I mean the ones that are absolutely essential for my life as an American, i.e. Heat, Vehicle fuel, food, housing, clothing, vehicle repairs (I schedule the same basic maintenance every February, tune up, alignment, etc.), electricity, water, phone, etc.