Real Earnings Plunge as Prices Rise

[stevebreeze]

Here is how we are paying for the tax cut and the disastrous balance of trade deficits. Not up front were most will see it but death of the middle class from a thousand cuts.


http://www.laborresearch.org/story2.php/368
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The October jump in the producer price index and the consumer price index signals a new phase in the four-year trends in inflation and real wages. These trends now confirm a downward trend in the living standards for U.S. workers. From October 2003 to October 2004, real average weekly earnings fell by half a percentage point.

Average weekly earnings in the private sector rose by 2.7 percent from October 2003 to October 2004, but after adjustment for inflation, real earnings dropped 0.5 percent. This means that workers' purchasing power has declined dramatically over the past year. A worker earning $400 a week or $20,800 annually in October 2003 now earns $380 a week or $19,760 annually in real dollar terms.


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Employers pushed wages down dramatically in the wake of the 2001 recession; ongoing soft labor markets have allowed employers to hold wages down since then. Low inflation throughout 2002 and 2003 roughly cancelled out annual pay increases averaging 2 percent to 3 percent. But with inflation now rising at rapid rates, real wages are falling at the fastest pace ever recorded and workers are facing a substantial decline in income.

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We got a lot of people to educate on their own economics.
:kick:

[GetTheRightVote]

1. It is to bad that voted for their own demise in the economy

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. .

[Nay]

3. Oh, well! Hope they like their hero's economy! I just hope it gets

bad enough that the repubs feel pain.

[sonicx]

4. at least the queers can't married!

:eyes: