According the the Economic Policy Institute, from 2002-2012:
- For male workers:
- With a college degree: hourly wages dropped 11% to $21.68
- With a high school diploma: hourly wages dropped 10% to 11.68
- For female workers:
- With a college degree: hourly wages dropped 7.6% to $18.80
- With a high school diploma: hourly wages dropped 9.2% to $9.92
All wages are adjusted for inflation.
With real earnings falling across all educational levels and both genders, what adjustments will we make to our standard of living? Also, if as we reported earlier, there’s a growing number of young workers who have less education than their parents for the first time since 1876, how will our prosperity be affected going forward?
Data source: Comstock’s, May 2012
