The real "middle" among American wage earners, after deductions for child support and, if you're lucky, payments into a 401(k), is $30,881 a year. That's the median wage - not the misleading average wage - meaning, half of employees make more than $30,881, and half make less. Not very impressive, is it? A family of four with one wage earner making $20,000 is officially in poverty in the United States, which is not very far away from the median wage of a little over $30,000. And we haven't even talked about health care costs and the ever-rising price of housing.
The median is the true figure (half above, half below), not some phony "average" which, as the writer notes, includes people like Bill Gates. A handful of the Forbes 400 and even those pulling down more than 200k a year can distort the figures.
"Household" income is also a big distorter, as multiple incomes for one family can mask the real decline in wages and salaries of individual jobs. It's obvious two incomes have about the same purchasing power as one from thirty or forty years ago.
Both cooked figures are very similar to reading Labor Department statistics about the "fastest-growing" jobs over the next decade. Those percentages mean absolutely NOTHING when it is the NUMBER of jobs being projected that should be the concern.
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