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How much Americans make in wages

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21–30 of 219 posts

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#21
post #9

> 48% of wager earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage I'm surprised. I expected that 50% of wage earners would make less or equal to the median wage. If for no other reason than the definition of median.

Ties. It's probably because of rounding.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#23
post #2

Dual ~30k incomes is still very much middle class in most of the US.

Unfortunately most of the population lives in a select few metro areas where, due to the price of rent, greatly reduces the power of 60k in joint income, married or not :(

Most?

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students and minors don't make up anywhere near half of the working population, though.

24% of the U.S. population is under the age of 18. If you include those that are in college, disabled, and retired then you are now at roughly 1/3 of the population. Based on the statististics provided in the article that would mean 75% of the population make above $30k.

> 24% of the U.S. population is under the age of 18.

We're talking about the US workforce, not the whole population.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#26
post #9

> 48% of wager earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage I'm surprised. I expected that 50% of wage earners would make less or equal to the median wage. If for no other reason than the definition of median.

Sure. Median(Variable) = Probability(value<=Variable) = 50%.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#27

The greatest trick the 1% in America has ever accomplished is convincing people who make $30/hour that scary foreigners and people who want to raise their minimum wage to above-poverty levels are a threat to their way of life.

The 1% aren't some clandestine group who trick people. Reality is just a highly complex set of different distributions of people interacting with each other, economic structure, government, and culture.

Treat and solve it as a systems issue. Attributing maligned motives to small discretized sets of people doesn't solve problems.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#28
post #9

> 48% of wager earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage I'm surprised. I expected that 50% of wage earners would make less or equal to the median wage. If for no other reason than the definition of median.

If you're going to be this pedantic, 50 is greater than 48. They're not wrong.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#29
post #5

>There is one important caveat to keep in mind when thinking about our dataset. The SSA numbers include any wage earners whatsoever, even part-time workers like students and teenagers. not leading with this feels like poor reporting

Students and minors don't make up anywhere near half of the working population, though.

students and working-age minors are about 50% employed and about 15% of the population. This means the real under 30k number is now 40%. Median salary is 44k.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this statistic. The article is sensationalist and misleading. I'm going to guess the person who wrote it is making 30k, for lack of marketable skills and being a liar.

I eyeballed all the numbers from here https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-information...

https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf

https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip...

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#30

The greatest trick the 1% in America has ever accomplished is convincing people who make $30/hour that scary foreigners and people who want to raise their minimum wage to above-poverty levels are a threat to their way of life.

The 1% aren't some clandestine group who trick people. Reality is just a highly complex set of different distributions of people interacting with each other, economic structure, government, and culture. Treat and solve it as a systems issue. Attributing maligned motives to small discretized sets of people doesn't solve problems.

Agreed. What is the solution to this systems issue, in your opinion?
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