As Wages Dropped For Most Americans, Number Of People Making More Than $1 Million A Year Rose 20 Percent

thinkprogress.org

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Oct 20, 2011 at 11:15 am

Each year, the Social Security Administration puts out data collected from every single W-2 employment form, totaling the nation’s salaries, bonuses, and other compensation added to. Last year’s data, released yesterday, are “in a word, awful,” as Reuters’ David Cay Johnston writes.

The data show that there were fewer jobs last year for most Americans and those jobs that did exist paid less — wages were down to the lowest level in 11 years. Meanwhile, “the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009“:

The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999.

The number of Americans with any work fell again last year, down by more than a half million from 2009 to less than 150.4 million. [...]

The number of workers making $1 million or more rose to almost 94,000 from 78,000 in 2009. However, that was still below some earlier years, including 2007, when more than 110,000 workers made more than $1 million each.

At the very top, the number of workers making more than $50 million rose in 2010 to 81, up from 72 the year before. But average pay in this group declined $4.5 million to $79.6 million.


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