Today we got our first look at American wages in 2010 based on payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration.
Half of all workers made less than $26,364, the median wage in 2010. That means the typical wage is at its lowest level since 1999, after adjusting for inflation.
Seems low. Are you making more? I would hope so if you are trying to feed, clothe and house a family.
Guess it depends on what part of the country you’re in.
I made less than half that last year.
With the start of new, regular employment I hope that I will make a sum closer to that figure, but I expect I’ll still be under it.
Checking a recent paystub I’ve made about $20,000 so far this year (net) so I’ll be clocking in close to that.
Get this, though: I’m a highly-trained pharmacy technician with 4 years of experience who makes $30/hr (major metro area) but am relegated to essentially an on-call position because there are about a dozen people with more seniority than me who get all the hours.
PS: I work in a hospital and don’t qualify for health insurance. WTH?
(Thankfully I have an understanding estranged husband who is willing to keep me on his work health insurance. How many people aren’t that fortunate though?)
Welcome to my life!
I think that has a lot to do with it, although there are of course lots of other factors.
3 years ago I was making 21k a year busting my ass 40 hours a week in a job I was EXTREMELY good at. I eventually realized not only were they never going to pay me what I was worth, they were never going to promote me because I was too damn good at what I was doing for them to lose me.
So I found myself another job in another state, drained my retirement account from job #1 and moved. I’m now making twice what I was making at job #1 and I’ve already had 1 promotion. And the cost of living is comparable, so all in all I came out way, WAY ahead.
Sometimes there IS such a thing as a geographical cure.
I’d be much more interested in a study of all full-time workers than all workers. Those stats are taking into account people that voluntarily work part-time. So an old person collecting a social security check, but still working 6 hours a week at the hospital gift shop so they’ll have something to get up for every day, comes in well under that line. Or a college student who works 5 hours a week for beer money. Or an otherwise stay-at-home-mom who works one evening a week at Joann Fabrics for the employee discount. Or a college student who works 12 hours a week between classes… And most of these super-casual part timers are at or barely above minimum wage. That significantly drags down the average. And I really can’t fairly compare my full-time wages to the wages of many who choose to work part-time.
Yeah. I would likely be making under that line for my job, but for where I live (quite high cost-of-living here compared to the national average). I grossed almost 30k in 2010, but around there it didn’t go nearly as far as it would have in a cheaper city. Wikipedia has these stats about the city I was living in in 2010:
[ul]
[li]median household income was $101,894[/li][li]males had a median income of $82,515[/li][li]females had a median income of $46,533[/li][li]per-capita income was $48,239[/li][li]2.5% of the population was below the poverty line[/li][/ul]
I suspect a great many more are people working the job they can find which is out of their field, and way less than the job they were laid off from. Just because it is necessary, doesn’t make it involuntary.
voluntary or involuntary doesn’t matter–the fact remains that the statistic cited in the OP is meaningless unless we know how many of those salaries were full-time and how many part-time.
Then, to make the cite meaningful, you have to eliminate the part-timers from the average wage.. Then, it becomes vital to ask how many of those part-timers are voluntary, and eliminate them from the average wage.
Then, you have to ask how many of the people remaining are the breadwinners.(i.e..the sole source of income for their family).
Then , you have to ask how many people are dependent on the breadwinner
Then,after all that… you get a meaningful statistic that tells you what the average person supporting his family is earning.
What is the significance of half of the workers making less than the median wage? Is that unusual, or is that one of those “Almost half of all people are below average” kind of thing?
Well, even if you’re working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year (full-time with two unpaid weeks off a year) that’s $13/hour…which is approaching twice minimum wage. That covers a LOT of jobs, and thus a LOT of people.
The actual statement you gave has no real meaning*, as it is the definition of median (and not average, as some people think). The part that has meaning is that the median wage is $26,364.
*Well, it tells you whether the number of distinct values is odd or even. If the number is even, then there’s exactly half above and half below. If it’s odd, at least one person has the exact median, meaning the number of data points above and below are slightly less than half.
But all of this is rather useless information in this case, especially with so many data points.
Full-time or part-time is meaningless because in some occupations full-time is unavailable in certain positions. Retail, for instance. The last two companies I’ve worked for, both of which consistently made the list for Fortune 100 Best Places to Work, does not make full-time status available to non-management employees most of whom make less than $10/hour. Hence, I am not guaranteed 40 hours/week, and rarely get that, regardless of my availability and willingness to work. Many of my co-workers work multiple part-time jobs in order to support themselves and their families. Count us out and you are further away – not closer – to an accurate picture of labor in America.
Anyone got a link?
You’re joking right? That’s what median means.
Exactly. My wife is not allowed to work more than 37 hours in any week. They’ll send her home when she hits that, which allows them to pretend that she’s not a full-time worker. But she has to be available to them any time they need her to come in, and equally available to get a phone call to not come in even though she really needs the hours.
It is the triumph of the MBAs.
Well, IANAMoneyologist, so I seriously don’t know if it’s unusual for half the workers to make less than the median wage or not. I mean, to me it sounds like about half of them should be making less than the median wage, but I’ve thought that sort of thing before only to be told I was missing some obvious detail.
Ok, this is more of a “7th grade math” issue than a “moneyologist” issue. Read this, especially the first sentence that defines what the word “median” means. Read it as many times as you need to until it sinks in.
so what you’re saying is that this is a pessimistic thread, and the title should read “50% of All US Workers Made More than $26,000 in 2010” instead.
I am not making more, but just around 26,000. I have no degree, and this is the most I’ve ever made in 20+ years of steady working. Also only the 3rd or so job to offer benefits at all, but fairly decent ones as I’m working for the state.