You've Come a Long Way, Baby
A new report shows the gender gap in wages closing, but not because women are finally making more—men are making less.
Yes, we're closing in on a dead heat in the race to the bottom. As the LA Times reports today, the disparity in median hourly pay between men and women narrowed to 18.3% in August from 21.5% five years earlier. The U.S. Labor Department also noted recently that the wage differential in 2005 was the smallest since the department began tracking it 33 years ago, when it was 36.9%.
"Wages generally have been depressed, but men's have been more depressed," said Michele Leber, chair of the Washington-based National Committee on Pay Equity.
So in addition to rising housing, medical, and insurance costs, Americans are earning less. And the Administration can't figure out why most Americans aren't "feeling" this economic boom Wall Street is all sweaty over?
Comments
You have to learn to look at this situation the way real Americans do: If the average worker earns fewer dollars, then those dollars will be more dear, and, therefore, the individual dollars will actually worth more (and represent a greater percentage of the worker's income) to the poor bastard who earns them.
Posted by: JML | December 5, 2006 10:10 PM
Inflated deflation? I love it!
Working/middle class angst should prove a big issue next election. Holding on to your job, shrinking benefits, hoping you don't have a major illness, hoping you can afford college.
Posted by: barabajagal | December 6, 2006 8:30 AM
I thjink you're right, Bar. And I see it formenting in the Boomers who are entering retirement and getting smacked with the reality of health care costs. Once staunch conservative opponents of "entitlements" are thinking twice when they're forced into retirement early and have to suck up the cost of their own health care.
Posted by: Derek Phillips | December 6, 2006 9:29 AM