On: 50% of All Workers Made Less than $26,000 in 2010

[protomyth]

going to the linked pages, I find this part a little more interesting (National average wage index):

  2006	38,651.41
  2007	40,405.48
  2008	41,334.97
  2009	40,711.61
  2010	41,673.83

[tomkarlo → protomyth]

The average is frankly, fairly uninteresting given what the distribution looks like. It's not a "typical" income, or the 50th percentile. It's just basically the sum of income divided by the number of earners.

Reminds me of the old saw about how when Bill Gates walks into a bar, everyone turns into a millionaire, on average.

[protomyth → tomkarlo]

Well, I was interested because 2009 is the only dip year in their data. The distribution data is not as interesting to me given what they ignore in income and location.

[tomkarlo → protomyth]

Yeah, but you don't know if it's a dip because the typical person made less, or the richest 1% made less. Given that 2009 was a recession, you'd expect average to be down either way (since population didn't change appreciably.)

That's the problem with averages.

[protomyth → tomkarlo]

That's the thing though, it is the only dip in their data. I am really curious how other recession periods didn't have the dip.

[tomkarlo → protomyth]

Could just be a timing issue. Recessions are measured on quarterly performance, this is annual. So you could have two quarters of negative growth in a row (a recession) and still have overall positive growth for the year.

Also, wages/employment are sticky because of the friction in changing them... companies will generally change comp slower than the change in sales (in both directions.)