Economix Blog: Growing Economies, Stagnant Wages

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

In the midst of the Occupy protests, the income gains going to the top 1 percent have gotten a lot of attention. Another way to understand the economic frustrations of the Occupiers is to look at how much middle-class living standards have changed, and how much the overall economy has grown.

A new report from the Resolution Foundation, a British research organization that focuses on workers with low income, has done just that. The report covers 10 rich countries, and looks at the growth rate of median pay versus economic growth per capita from 2000 to the start of the Great Recession.

Here’s the key chart showing that ratio:

A higher ratio means that the pace of growth for median pay was close to the pace of growth for output per capita. A low ratio means that median pay grew much more slowly than did the economy as a whole.

Of the 10 countries analyzed, Finland showed the closest relationship between the living standards of the typical worker and improvements in the overall economy. The United States was on the lower end. From 2000 to 2007, median pay increased at a quarter of the pace of output per capita. In other words, the typical American worker did not share much in the country’s growing wealth even when the economy was good.

Still, the United States was not the worst of the bunch. In Canada, median pay didn’t grow at all between 2000 and 2007.

The moral of the story is that the United States isn’t the only country experiencing growing inequality. Most of the rest of the developed world is, too.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fddc1c45a1b8da84e472f0bcb44422fa