Wage polarization increased, both nationwide and within individual metropolitan areas. Nationally, middle-wage earners experienced an inflation-adjusted 4.5% decline, low wage workers lost 8.3%, but high wage workers gained 3.4%. The recession appears to be deepening the divide.
In half of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, high-wage earners saw their wages grow, while middle- and low-wage workers experienced declines. Most large metro areas had wage growth at the top and sometimes at the midpoint of their wage distributions, but in only five metropolitan areas - Cape Coral, Jacksonville, Providence, New Haven, and Virginia Beach - did wages grow for high-, middle-, and low-wage workers. (p. 119)[...] At the national level, wages at the top diverged from those at the middle and bottom. Middle-wage workers saw their inflation-adjusted hourly earnings decline by 4.5 percent from 1999 through 2008.[...] In 2008, they earned $17.80 per hour, down from $18.64 in 1999 (all wages are expressed in 2008 dollars). A steeper drop of 8.3 percent was recorded for low-wage workers, whose hourly earnings fell from $8.70 in 1999 to $7.98 in 2008. The trend was positive for high-wage workers, however. Their hourly earnings rose by 3.4 percent, to just over $40.00 in 2008. In short, the productivity gains of the 2000s did not result in broadly shared wage gains. (p. 120)[...] Less educated workers have been hit particularly hard, at least in terms of employment. (p. 121)
Wial, H. & Friedhoff, A. (2010). Work. In State of metropolitan America: On the front lines of demographic transformation, (pp. 118-131). Retrieved from http://www.brookings.edu/metro/stateofmetroamerica.aspx
Middle-skills jobs have lost share in the employment pool in the last three decades, a trend of labor-market "polarization" reinforced by the recession, according to a report released [April 30, 2010] .[...] "Employment losses during the recent recession were far more severe in middle-skill, white- and blue-collar jobs than in either high-skill, white-collar jobs or in low-skill service occupations," according to the report by economist David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was presented at a Washington conference about the future of American Jobs.[...] "Perhaps most alarmingly, males as a group have adapted comparatively poorly to the changing labor market," [David] Autor wrote.[...] "Comparison of the wage gap between college and high school graduates probably understates significantly the real growth in compensation for college graduates relative to high school graduates in recent decades," according to the report. "College graduates work more hours per week and more weeks per year than high school graduates, spend less time unemployed, and receive a disproportionate share of nonwage fringe benefits, including sick and vacation pay, employer-paid health insurance, pension contributions, and safe and pleasant working conditions."
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