20 graphs showing inequality in the USA
April 7, 2011
Below are 20 graphs from The Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequalityshowing inequality, and in the main increasing inequality, in the United States. Clicking on any graph will take you to a page at the Stanford Center that explains the graph and gives sources. The 20 graphs are: Wage Inequality, CEO Pay, Wealth Inequality, Education Wage Premium, Gender Pay Gaps, Occupational Sex Segregation, Racial Gaps in Education, Racial Discrimination, Poverty, Residential Segregation, Health Insurance, Intragenerational Income Mobility, Bad Jobs, Discouraged Workers, Homelessness, Intergenerational Income Mobility, Deregulation of the Labor Market, Job Losses, Immigrants and Inequality, and Productivity and Real Income.
Wage Inequality
Education Wage Premium
Gender Pay Gaps
Health Insurance
Intragenerational Income Mobility
Bad Jobs
Intergenerational Income Mobility
Deregulation of the Labor Market
Job Losses
Immigrants and Inequality
This unusual graph is from an article by Gavyn Davies posted yesterday in the Financial Times Blog.
Davies comments on the graph as follows.
The red lines show the growth rate of the emerging economies, on an annual basis and on trend. The forecasts are from the IMF. The strengthening in emerging market growth since the late 1990s is very pronounced, and is exactly what everyone would expect. The blue lines show the GDP performance of the developed economies. Not only have the growth rates of the developed world fallen relative to the emerging countries since the late 1990s, they have actually fallen in absolute terms as well.
Of course, a large part of the decline in western growth has been due to the collapse of the financial sector in 2008. But I am beginning to wonder whether the rise in the red lines, and the fall in the blue lines, are somehow connected.
If so, it is going to cause a lot of trouble.
The article can be read here: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/03/23/523231/the-worlds-economic-centre-of-gravity/
America’s decade of declining real wages
from David Ruccio
“We allow our fellow Americans to be exploited for the benefit of corporate greed and unnecessary wars. This nation has become an embarrassment.” That’s how tintin from the Midwest responded to the news that many factory jobs today pay far less than what workers in almost identical positions earned in the past.
Perhaps even more significant, while the typical production job in the manufacturing sector paid more than the private sector average in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, that relationship flipped in 2007, and line work in factories now pays less than the typical private sector job. That gap has been widening — in 2013, production jobs paid an average of $19.29 an hour, compared with $20.13 for all private sector positions.
In addition, according to a new study by the National Employment Law Project [pdf], wages in U.S. manufacturing are not keeping up with inflation. As shown in the table above, the median wage for all manufacturing workers in the United States is (as of 2013) $15.66 per hour. In real terms, however, since 2003, the inflation-adjusted median hourly wage for manufacturing workers has declined by nearly $1.00 an hour, from $16.38 to $15.66 (in 2013 dollars). That amounts to a drop of over 4 percent. For a manufacturing worker who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks per year, that translates to a drop in income of about $2,000 a year. That real decline has taken place across all wage categories.
Meanwhile, during that same period, manufacturing productivity increased by over 25 percent.
In other words, while the American public assumes that manufacturing jobs are highly paid, allowing workers to benefit from their efforts and skills, the reality is that millions of manufacturing workers now found themselves at the bottom of the wage scale, benefiting less and less from their productivity.
It’s a national embarrassment.