For this data to be represented meaningfully would require either 1) two charts on which each data set is plotted with no interaction between the two or 2) one chart with a common axis, displaying something like the % deviation from the start point.

This chart is a rather unnecessary distortion of data. I am certain that the message in the data is interesting, but we can’t see it clearly with this chart.

What can a 25 year old American do for GE at $30,000/year that a better educated 25 year old South Korean won’t do better for $20,000.

I’ve said it a dozen times and I’ll say it a dozen more. Keep building up your skills and save and invest like crazy because this is as good as it gets for the rest of your life if you live in the rich west.

now:
not so much

(though I am not to optimistic that it looks better in much of europe. in particular, german inflation adjusted income went down quite a bit the last years, in an attempt to increase competitiveness of the german industry).

1. Let’s run a $600 billion a year trade deficit and throw away 5 million jobs. We don’t need them anyway. What’s 5 million jobs among friends? Of course, trade deficits also strongly predict subsequent economic crises. I guess admitting the “free” trade is a poisoned chalice is unthinkable among sensible people.

2. Let’s open our markets to China while China systematically hollows out the U.S. economy. China’s policies have brought vast miserly to the U.S. in recent years. A careful study “The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States.⇤” found that China accounts for at least 1/4th of U.S. manufacturing job losses. Not a big problem living in D.C. presumably. Let Ohio rot.

3. Let’s import millions and millions of unskilled workers (and welfare recipients) even though we are creating zero new jobs over a ten year period and public finances are in disarray. Immigrants (legal and illegal) are literally replacing Americans on a staggering scale. I guess unemployed Americans should get a Ph.D. in molecular biology and stop complaining.

You see, solving America’s economic problems is so easy we are already doing it.

Maybe kids were moving in with parents for 2008-2009 but are now moving out again?

Supported by anecdotal data as well… Young adults aren’t moving out (or are moving back with parents). May be changing in other ways as well.

Neither the median nor the mean is a complete representation of a distribution. If the distribution is normal, then the two will be the same. If it is heavily skew, as income tends to be, then the median will be significantly lower than the mean. But neither observation is sufficient to explain what is happening here.

Anybody have the data to plot and compare the distribution before and after?

I’ll note, also, that the median income was more or less constant through ~2009. The 10% drop has all been recognized in the past two years — and shows no sign of slowing.

Notably, the recovery from the Bush recession (which was worse for employment from a private-sector-recovery perspective than the current one) shows median income rising for a while until the private sector recovers. (The number of people employed in the Private Sector at the beginning of the 2001 recession is only reached again–absolute number, not as percent of workers–in May of 2005.)

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph .png?g=2FL