Over the last 30 years there has been very modest wage growth
for the typical worker. This is not because the economy was weak
and employers were strapped for cash or profits. The economy
enjoyed soaring productivity between 1980 and 2009. The Figure
compares median wage growth over that period to average gross
domestic product growth per worker, a measure of what each
individual worker, on average, contributed to the overall
economy. This is equivalent to the growth of income per worker
as well. While average income per worker grew 59.0%, median
wages grew by just 11.2%. Over this same period the amount of
wealth (household assets less liabilities) per worker grew by
63.7%. This modest wage growth was not the result of a broken
economy: rather, modest wage growth is the result of the way the
economy has been designed to work. Essentially, economic policy
of the last three decades has not supported good jobs. The focus
instead has been on policies that claimed to make consumers
better off through lower prices