Friday, November 28, 2014

Wot Recovery?

Last year, according to the Social Security Administrationfigures, 50 percent of all American workers made less than $28,031, and 39 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000.  If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make $20,000.  So the fact that 39 percent of all workers made less than that amount is rather telling. The “average” yearly wage in America last year was just $43,041.  But after accounting for inflation, that was actually worse than the year before, down $79 from the previous year when measured in 2013 dollars and $508 below the 2007 level.  Bear in mind that “average pay” is statistically skewed by the millionaires and billionaires at the top end of the spectrum. Median pay means that 50 percent of American workers made less than that number, and 50 percent of American workers made more than that number, $28,031.

-39 percent of American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
-52 percent of American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
-63 percent of American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
-72 percent of American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

It has been estimated that it takes approximately $50,000 a year to support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four, and so the fact that 72 percent of all workers make less than that amount shows how difficult it is for families that try to get by with just a single breadwinner. In many homes in America today, both parents are working multiple jobs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet. Pay-checks are stagnant while the cost of living continues to rise. Flat or declining average pay is a major reason so many Americans feel that the recession has never ended

The jobs that are being added to the economy pay a lot less than the jobs lost in the last recession.  In fact, it has been estimated that the jobs that have been created since the last recession pay an average of 23 percent less than the jobs that were lost.


One group of Americans that did see their incomes actually increase last year. Those making over 50 million dollars had their pay increase by an average of $12.8 million in 2013.

1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

British Gas workers were outraged that Helge Lund was offered pay worth that of 2,113 minimum-wage workers to run the privatised firm. Lund — currently head of 67 per cent Norwegian state-owned Statoil — is being offered a £12m “golden hello” in shares and up to another £14m a year if he hits performance targets.

The current average executive pay and shares package within Britain’s top 100 stock market-listed companies stands at more than £2.43m a year, according to analysts Income Data Services — 92 times the average wage and 205 times the minimum wage. Directors’ pay has risen six times faster over the past 14 years than ordinary workers’.