Lost in Recession, Toll on Underemployed and Underpaid
These are anxious days for American workers. Many, like Ms.
Woods, are underemployed. Others find pay that is simply not
keeping up with their expenses: adjusted for inflation, the
median hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was a decade
earlier, according to data from a forthcoming book by the
Economic Policy Institute, “The State of Working America, 12th
Edition.”
Household wealth is dropping. The Federal Reserve reported last
week that the economic crisis left the median American family in
2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, wiping away two
decades of gains.