Whither Go Real Wages?

Here’s a graph at which we should all take a close look. It’s just a few data points bouncing around a chart, but it explains a lot, I think, about why so many people are unsettled by developments in the current economy.

The data are the inflation-adjusted, average weekly earnings of a representative group of workers—those who are non-managers in the service sector and blue-collar workers in manufacturing. So we’re talking about the bottom 80% of workforce.