[lbo-talk] Median income higher than in 1985

[Gar Lipow]

On 10/21/06, Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "As the U.S. population crossed the 300 million mark
> sometime around 7:46 a.m. Tuesday (according to the
> U.S. Census Bureau), the typical family is doing a
> whole lot better than their grandparents were in 1967,
> the year the population first surpassed 200 million.
>
> Mr. and Mrs. Median's $46,326 in annual income is 32%
> more than their mid-'60s counterparts, even when
> adjusted for inflation, and 13% more than those at the
> median in the economic boom year of 1985. And thanks
> to ballooning real estate values, average household
> net worth has increased even faster. The typical
> American household has a net worth of $465,970, up 83%
> from 1965, 60% from 1985 and 35% from 1995. "
>

First it is really interesting that they chose 1965 as the comparsion
year, since  hourly wages for 80% of the workforce peaked in 1972 or
1973. Even if you go back to 1968, hourly wages for most of us were
higher in real terms than today.   In short the difference is due
almost entirely to more household time being spent on paid work than
in 1972 or 1968.  A household with the same hours of work as in 1968
would earn less today than the median income then. A  household where
combine hours from both adults in the household was the same as is
usual today would have earned more in 1968. That is only slightly
trure for 1968. If I cherry picked my endpoint as this article seems
to do and compared today to 1972, the hourly difference would be quite
substantial. (1972-1973  is when hourly wags for the bottom 80% of the
U.S. workforce peaked.)