American workers made more 35 years ago

[lancemurdoch]

The average inflation-adjusted hourly wage is below what it was 35 years ago. This is not the result of the current downturn (which Paul Krugman recently says is the worst one since the Depression), it's a 35 year trend. Also a trend is that American hours worked has increased by a three-digit number per year in that time period, and we surpassed Japan a few years ago as the workers who worked the most hours per year in the industrialized world. We hear about the gap between the ever widening and accelerating gap between the rich and workers, and have heard for a long time how the next generation will not live better than the parents but worse - and that seems to have come to pass, this generation is now the one that is living worse than the previous one.

One can see if you go the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics's web site -

1) Go to http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab4.htm
2) Click constant dollars to adjust for inflation
3) Click retrieve data
4) Change from tab to 1968
5) Click go
6) Remember to have adjusted for inflation (step 2)

[izzie]

1. Yes we know and now women MUST work and not stay home and care

for children or not live as well as we did when I had children in the 50's. As my dear father said. It is how long you work for a loaf of bread and pair of shoes that tells you how well you are doing. You are going backwards if you have to work more hours for them, and how much you make means little it is what the money is worth that counts.

[Ripley]

2. And the talking heads will tell you Americans are so efficient.

That worker productivity has gone up so much, they don't need to rehire all those people they laid off. When in truth they are forcing people to work longer hours and do the work of 2 or 3 people so they don't have to pay the additional salary and benefits that a decent employer would.