Let’s review some basic facts. A good place to start is median income—the income of the person at the fiftieth percentile of the total distribution. The year 1999 was the peak year for the real (inflation-adjusted) income of the median American household. It reached $54,932 that year, but then started falling. By 2011, it had fallen nearly 10 percent to $50,054, even as overall GDP hit a record high. In particular, wages of unskilled workers in the United States and other advanced countries have trended downward.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=214491