Real average hourly wages of young college graduates have declined

From economist Robert Reich's Facebook site

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/1001276739884922

Commencement this morning for my students here at Berkeley. While recent college graduates continue to earn higher wages...

Posted by Robert Reich on Monday, May 18, 2015

Commencement this morning for my students here at Berkeley. While recent college graduates continue to earn higher wages than young people without college degrees, their wages are no longer rising. Since 2000, the real average hourly wages of young college graduates have declined 7 percent, adjusted for inflation. Yet according to a study in yesterday’s Times, the pay of America’s 200 top CEOs has been rising 12 percent a year, to an average of $21 million now. While young people are saddled with student debt and poor job prospects, CEOs have the lowest effective tax rates since World War II; many are paying less than 15 percent.

When I graduated college 47 years ago, my peers talked about a pending revolution. But in those days, jobs were plentiful, tuition was low (zero at many state universities), median wages were rising, CEO pay was only 25 times the pay of average workers (now it’s 300 times), and the top tax rate was 70 percent (the top effective rate, after deductions and credits, was still higher than 50 percent).