Free Republic

The real median earnings of both men and women dropped in the third quarter of 2013 and are down 3.2 percent since President Barack Obama took office in the first quarter of 2009, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In non-inflation-adjusted dollars, Americans who worked full-time for a wage or salary had median usual weekly earnings of $775 in second quarter of 2013 and $777 in the third quarter. In current dollars that was $2-per-week increase. However, when adjusted for inflation, median earnings actually declined from the second to the third quarter, according to BLS....

What a difference three days make. 72 little hours. In that time, a New York Times reporter went from tolling the death knell of real wage growth to reporting a 7-percent wage jump over last year after inflation. “[T]he current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages,” The New York Times’ David Leonhardt and Steven Greenhouse somberly noted in their page A6 article in the August 28 edition. Greenhouse and Leonhardt added a political spin to data showing the “median...

Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times. Inflation rose 3.1 per cent in the year to March but salaries climbed just 2.4 per cent, according to the Employment Cost Index. In the final three months of 2004, real wages fell by 0.9 per cent.The last time salaries fell this steeply was at the start of 1991, when real wages declined by 1.1 per cent.Stingy pay rises mean many Americans will have to work longer hours to keep up with the cost of living, and they...