Wages Not Keeping Up With Rise in GDP

Posted on September 18, 2007

Wages are not keeping up with the rise in GDP. The economic growth in the U.S. is not being passed on to the workers. A CNN article article says most workers real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) have been relatively stagnant this decade.

CNN says, "While productivity jumped almost 20 percent since 2000, the real median hourly wage of all workers rose just 3 percent in the same period."

A chart in this article from the Economy Policy Institute shows you how real hourly wages have increased very little since 2000. After 2004 things got even worse. This is really bad news for workers especially when you consider the incredible rise in food and gas over the past few years. Only those wage earners on the very high end of the earnings curve have been seeing much in the way of wage increases. The CNN article also says that real wages for earners in the top 95% have risen 9.4% since 2000 and 5.1% since 2003.