72 Hours after Mourning Death of Wage Growth, Times Notes Wages Up with GDP Growth

Thanks to Instapundit, we learn that wage rowth is reported up by the NY Slimes only 72 hours after it was reported down. The article by Ken Shepherd with the Business & Media Institute begins:

What a difference three days make. 72 little hours.

In that time, a New York Times reporter went from tolling the death knell of real wage growth to reporting a 7-percent wage jump over last year after inflation.

“[T]he current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages,” The New York Times’ David Leonhardt and Steven Greenhouse somberly noted in their page A6 article in the August 28 edition.

Greenhouse and Leonhardt added a political spin to data showing the “median hourly wage” dipping “2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation.”

“That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections,” the correspondents argued before remarking that “wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product.”

But new data released on August 30 pushed Leonhardt to admit the death of wage growth he wrote about earlier might be greatly exaggerated.

But here is an analysis done by a self identified Liberal professor at a major California University who writes in his blog "Back Talk":

Is our Unhappiness Caused by "Stagnant Wages?"

If there is one theory that people are resorting to in order to explain our dour economic mood in spite of all the good economic data, it is that wages have not kept up with inflation. Even Tigerhawk uncritically buys into this theory (via Instapundit). It's a great theory, and it dovetails perfectly with the "Two Americas" speech that John Edwards used to give. I love that speech. I'd love it more if it were true. But it isn't, so far as I can tell.

I don't doubt the wage statistic, but I do question the reflexive interpretation of it (i.e., that many people are actually worse off). Don't let the media do your thinking for you. Doubt, then verify.

And

What you see is that no one is worse off, but the richer you are, the better off you are (especially during the Clinton years, during which the top 5% made spectacularly impressive gains). .... For now, my point is that during the Clinton years, we loved the economy. Now we don't. This is true even though the median-family-income story was much the same during the two eras (though it is slightly better now, overall, than it was then). If we hate our fabulous economy now because the less fortunate are not gaining much ground, we should have hated it back then, too.

In a way, though, there are two Americas, but that has been true for a very long time (i.e., it is not unique to the Bush years). The poorest among us are not gaining much ground. They didn't during the Clinton years and they aren't during the Bush years.