What We’re Reading: An increasing wage disparity in the First State
From the News Journal: It’s not news that nearly every Delaware family has been negatively impacted by the recession, but a story in Sunday’s News Journal says that Delaware’s lower and middle class residents are the ones suffering the most from our country’s economic decline because their wages are are more likely to have remained stagnant or even decrease since 2000. For poorer Delawareans who are able to find work, not only are they being paid less than they were 10 years ago, their wages aren’t keeping up with the average cost of living increase, making it more difficult for them to pay their bills and save for the future.
Excerpt from the article:
The wage gap between the richest and poorest Delawareans has widened sharply since 2000, with many in lower-paying occupations enduring a lost decade of wage growth.
Workers in some occupations took steps backward from 2000-10 as increases in the cost of food and other products outpaced increases in their pay, according to a News Journal review of state and federal labor data.
In other words, many Delawareans saw the value of their labor — and their buying power — fall in the last decade, even in the years leading up to a recession that threw thousands into the ranks of the unemployed. The wage stagnation pressured consumers to overswipe credit cards and undersave, putting many in a serious long-term bind at a time when job security remains iffy and competition for jobs continues to be brutal.
“This period has just been one of dismal wage growth,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist who specializes in labor markets and economic inequality at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “And we know it was a period of rising inequality.”
To give you an idea of Delaware’s current wage disparity, according to The News Journal: those in management occupations generally saw 39 percent real wage growth during the 10-year span, dwarfing a 2.2 percent gain for office and administrative support jobs. Wages for receptionists and other office clerks dropped 7.8 percent from 2000-10, when adjusted for inflation. Servers, including those at fast-food restaurants, saw their paychecks lose 9.8 percent in value from 2000-10. Construction laborers saw a 1.6 percent real wage reduction.
Across all occupations, average real wages increased 4.9 percent from 2000-10.
Read the full story in The News Journal. To learn more about Chris’ work supporting job creation in Delaware, click here.
