February 19, 2015

Chart of the Day: Wages Are Down For Almost Everyone

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EPI’s Elise Gould provides us with wage data for 2014 today, and the results aren’t pretty:

  • Every group has seen a cumulative drop in wages since 2007 except for the top 5 percent (red line).
  • Every group saw a drop in wages in 2014 except for the bottom 10 percent (dark blue line).

Why did wages of the poor rebound a bit last year? Because 19 states raised their minimum wages:

A state-by-state comparison of trends in the 10th percentile suggests that these minimum-wage increases account for the nationwide 10th percentile increase. Between 2013 and 2014, the 10th percentile wage in states with minimum-wage increases grew by an average of 1.6 percent, while it barely rose (a 0.3 percent increase) in states without a minimum-wage increase.

In other news about wage growth, women have done slightly better than men; whites have done better than blacks; and college graduates have done better than high school grads. The full report is here.

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We see the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

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You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled thanks to a $50,000 match. So when you make a donation, it’ll go twice as far.

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