We Need a Strong Recovery, Quick

For workers with lower and moderate hourly wages, the current recession comes at a precarious time. The losses in income that workers are expected to incur now come on the heels of an insufficient recovery from the last recession in 2001.

The graph below shows the growth in average hourly wages for the lower-earning half of the Washington State workforce. Wages are adjusted for inflation.

There are three very different time periods:

BOOM: Low unemployment and robust job growth translated to strong wage growth in the last half of the 1990s.

BUST: After adjusting for inflation, there was no wage growth among lower and moderate wage workers.

BUSTED BOOM: When job growth started to rebound after the 2001 recession, wage growth improved, but stayed very anemic.

We only have comparable wage data through 2008 at this point, but it’s a safe bet that wages are taking another hit. Looking ahead, not only can workers not afford this recession, they can’t afford another recovery like the last one.

* Data is based on analysis of CPS-ORG microdata, following the methodology used in State of Working America. Want more detail? Let me know.