Tom Walker wrote: >>RELEASED TODAY: Median weekly earnings of the nation's 96.2 million >>full-time wage and salary workers were $541 in the fourth quarter of 1998. >>This was 5.9 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 1.5 >>percent in the CPI-U over the same period. ... > >Four and a half percent is quite an astonishing increase in real median >weekly earnings. The three-year increase in real weekly earnings for all of 1998 - 7.0% - is the highest since the BLS started the all private workers series in 1964, eclipsing 1973's previous record of 6.2%. For manufacturing workers, the 1995-1998 figure was 6.1%, which is lower than the golden age numbers, but still the highest since the early 1970s. Longer hours contributed a lot to recent performance, though; real hourly earnings for all private sector workers were up just 1.9% from 1995 to 1998; in the late 60s/early 70s, the figures were in the 4-7% range. Doug
