Median men's wages, 1964-2009 (Real inflation-adjusted dollars)

[WildNovember]

Median earnings of full-time, year-round male workers = red
(Making what they were making in 1967)

Median earnings of all men = blue
(Making less than they were making in 1964)

The red line is the usual picture of median earnings for full-time men. The problem with this line is that the percentage of men working over time has been declining over time.

This attrition or dropping out of the labor force is not random, though, as the decline in full-time work it is disproportionately concentrated among low-skill men. This means that the red line is being propped up by the fact that it is increasingly comprised of higher skilled men.

One sensible correction for this is to calculate the median wage for all men (not just the full-time workers). This is the blue line in the below graph.

Why is this important? The full-time sample (red line) suggests that median wages have been stagnant since 1969


http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/the-struggles-of-men/




The thing about the 60s, though -- even if you were old or had other strikes against you you could still get some kind of shit job -- cleaning a church, tending a dive bar, enough to get you an SRO room and some food. Those kind of jobs seem to have disappeared -- or don't even pay for the room anymore. A lot of those odd maintenance-type jobs used to come with some kind of living arrangement too. Now a lot of them have been "corporatized" which means the corporation takes a cut, pays shit, and there's no living space.

[Mimosa]

1. Link, please. n/t

[WildNovember]

2. Here, and also added in the OP.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/the-struggles-of-men/

[sam11111]

3. Error? first two paragrphs have line colors reversed

Blue declines...."Making less"

[WildNovember]

4. My typo, thanks, I've changed it.

[sam11111]

6. PS thanks for this Graph...was needing it. And thanks for several great posts lately. They stood out

as really good ones.
Keep posting!

I especially like graphs.

[sam11111]

5. Golden Age- a term to use often - '45 - '64. Normal top tax resulted in good jobs, good economy,

and the oddjobs detailed in the OP.

Golden Age term refutes many RW lies about how "Trickledown is what works."
----------------------
Trickledown is a flop.
-----------------------
What works is the economy of the Golden Age.

[WildNovember]

7. Agreed.

[niyad]

8. is there a similar one for women?

[WildNovember]

9. not with that article.

[gratuitous]

10. And yet, since at least 1980, worker productivity has gone up and up

All of that Wealth created by Labor is going somewhere besides the workers' pockets. But where? Where???

[SoCalDem]

11. Earliest Boomers hit the job-market in 68-75. There's no surprise

that the powerful took note. With a glut of workers entering the job market, they knew they had found their sweet spot...millions of inexperienced workers, eager for jobs, and who were there for the picking.. to take advantage of for decades, and all those new needs as they built their families.

The Daddies of all these new workers were the ones who had the pensions, and who would eventually cost those employers more money down the line. The "new" ones because of the sheer numbers, would fight each other to get and keep the jobs, might also be ready to give up the perks their grandfathers & fathers fought for.

Boomer children (perhaps most of them) grew up privileged compared to previous generations, so there was no need to fear being taken advantage of.

Many times we forget how many "think tanks" came along in the 70's, and how many of them DID do long-range demographic planning.

They made sure that there was never going to be any real economic parity. There could never be parity for all of us, because to do so would mean that the ones who run the show would have to take less than they wanted.

[malthaussen]

13. The demographic was already bad

... when the Boomers started coming of age to work. The situation was exacerbated because at the same time women started to enter the labor pool in greater quantities. An unintended consequence of the Women's Lib movement was to drive the price of labor down even further than it would have gone given the adjustment for the Boomer classes entering the labor pool.

-- Mal

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. While wages for women have increased, men make 28% less than their fathers did.

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/07_milken_greenstone_looney/07_milken_greenstone_looney.pdf

One good reason: the college completion rate for men peaked in 1977. Boys get the message that school isn't meant for them.

K&R for visibility.

[WildNovember]

14. But median wages for women are still less than what median men made in the 60s.

Plus all workers got an extra (unnecessary) 1-2% deduction from their checks starting 1983 thanks to Reagans so-called Social Security reform. And still got taxed on that income that they never saw -- no one ever talks about THAT "double taxation". Plus Social Security started being taxed too. Plus nickle and dime taxes increased.