William Alden
Huffington Post
Wages for American workers have fallen dramatically since the financial crisis, in what will likely turn out to be the worst such plunge since the Great Depression, the Wall Street Journal reports.
When hard times hit, employers typically are reluctant to reduce wages. But this downturn has been different: More than half the workers who found new work by early 2010 after losing jobs between 2007 and 2009 said their pay had dropped, according to Labor Department data cited in the WSJ. A full 36 percent said the new job paid 20 percent less than their former one.
While headlines have focused on the national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, the pain extends far beyond those 14.5 million who are deemed officially unemployed by government statistics. The only other instance of such severe wage reductions since the Depression was during the recession of the early 1980s, but the current slump is on track to be far worse, the WSJ notes.
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