Most of the biggest inflation-adjusted wage gains have occurred in metro areas that have directly benefited from the boom in U.S. oil and gas production
in terms of income status, the past four decades have been very good to people working in financial and natural-resources industries or as executives and managers, but not so good for sales workers or people in blue-collar manufacturing jobs.
On the occasion of President Obama’s last State of the Union address, a look back at his first congressional address – his priorities, those of the public at the time and what’s happened in the years since.
Proposed new overtime rules would make nearly 5 million white-collar workers eligible for time-and-a-half – mostly retail and food service managers, office administrators, low-level financial workers and other modestly paid managers and office professionals.
While most manufactured goods are considerably cheaper than they were three decades ago, many key services are much more expensive — contributing to the paradox of greater material abundance among even poor Americans.
Globally, incomes have risen fastest for the very well-off and the bottom two-thirds of the world’s people, but have stagnated or fallen for the “global upper middle class.”