| The first chart in the Pew article makes it seem not so bad. - The yellow line seems to show that, while average hourly wages in current dollars have gone up linearly over time since the mid-1960s, and that may look basically like a good thing, this could be all attributable to inflation. This could sound scary I guess because of inflation, but then we turn to the green line. - The green line shows that average hourly wages in current dollars have been basically flat since the mid-1960s. So, while inflation exists, basically the earning looks the same, numerically, if we adjust for it. The mid-1960s is an interesting place to start the plot. It shows sort of the opposite of what I had expected to see, having seen the topic popularly treated on the web before. I clicked to see if the article discussed the graphic at the top of [0] in which: - it appears that linear compensation growth tracked with linear productivity growth from 1948 to 1972 and - after 1972, productivity began growing linearly, but compensation became (and remained) flat. I'm not sure if the Pew author was making trying to make the topic more original or more palatable, but the author seems to be alluding to the same topic without pointing out the potentially helpful graphic for the related but different dataset. This makes me wonder what the chart in the OP would look like if it went back further. Nonetheless, the points in the comment [1] appear to apply to [0] as well. I think the answer to the question posed by the domain name at [0] might help answer the question in the OP. Do the additional charts help? [0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481844 |