50% of All Workers Made Less than $26,000 in 2010

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/50-of-all-workers-made-less-than-26-000-in-2010/247059/

by diogenescynic • 15 years ago

66 98 15 years ago

MrWestley5• 15 years ago

So with all of this top x% talk that is going on I decided to see where I was on the scale. It was pretty pathetic. Not because I was low on the scale but rather very high. I don't consider myself to be very wealthy at all. Don't get me wrong I am doing well for myself. I worked hard to get what I have and I am good at what I do, but I should not be in the top 3%. I am not trying to brag, I think it is stupid and wrong that I am that high up on the scale. I'm not saying I earn too much (I am actually underpaid according the the industry i am in.) It is just that I can't believe that others are being paid that much less.

geogra42• 15 years ago

The incredible wealth disparity in this country is quite disturbing. And one look at the data confirms that reality. Half of workers barely make enough to get by. And I assure you that a very large portion of those making under the median probably get poor benefits/heathcare (if they get them at all)

rdtsc3• 15 years ago

A lot employees in retail for example had their hours cut just enough to they become legally 'part-time' employees. This lets business off the hook from providing benefits like health care and other things. So these people go and get a second or even third job, all part time. They might work 60 hours / week but they are all close to minimum wage and at the first visit to the hospital they basically end up in bankruptcy.

Once you are in bankruptcy it can become more difficult to get jobs because shady employers often check credit history during the application process. Why? For the fuck of it, as part of the background check. So then there is this black mark on it.

There is not even a single thing that is wrong and we just fix that and bam! we are back up. Minimum wage is low, no single payer health system, our graduates are not competitive enough, housing is still expensive in major cities, there is just a lot of people just barely keeping their heads above the water. Not sure what the fix is and not saying there is a direct casual relationship between any of the things above or others, but it is obvious that he situation quite bad.

hugh37• 15 years ago

The real problem is that there's a huge disparity in talent. The worst of us are worth a whole lot less than the best of us. The question is: what do we do about that?

yummyfajitas3• 15 years ago

Luckily, the recession is causing the wealth disparity to decrease.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/the-1-ai...

sciurus• 15 years ago

It's hard to understand how you could be surprised that 97% of Americans make less than $140,000.

thurn• 15 years ago

These figures are interesting, but you really need to take into account cost of living to get an accurate picture of poverty. $26,000/year would barely cover my rent for a tiny one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, whereas in other places, it's enough to live somewhat comfortably.

spenrose2• 15 years ago

More on this topic:

http://www.selfsufficiencystandard.org/

It's bad out there. Most people live lives of quiet desperation.

spacehaven• 15 years ago

Judging by the hordes of people on the streets with signs, desperation doesn't sound so quiet lately.

jquery2• 15 years ago

That goes for people rich and poor. We all have to face death.

dlsspy• 15 years ago

I am the 50%

jshort• 15 years ago

I'd like to see this data over a longer time period. Or compared to a similar time span around the Great Depression. Similarly, I'd like to see data on a global scale. I'd imagine the gap is continuously widening. Markets constantly shift, this may be a second re-adjustment from the dot.com bubble, just the "99 percent" are adjusting as the 1% goes the other way.

justincormack• 15 years ago

No the gap is not continuously widening everywhere. It rises and falls a lot. There is one measure and a historical chart in this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

Shenglong4• 15 years ago

Here in Ontario, minimum wage is $10/hour. Assuming you work 9 hours a day, 6 days a week:

10 * 9 * 6 * 52 = $28,080 / year

No, I don't think 54 hours / week is too much to ask. I'm sure most people making over the 26k probably work more than that. Yes, I know this is Canada, but it's just an example.

rauljara3• 15 years ago

There are a whole bunch of things I find troubling about your comment.

- Minimum wage in Canada != minimum wage in the U.S.

- Economy in Canada != economy in U.S.

- Canada has free health care, blunting the impact of a low wage job without benefits (as opposed to the U.S. where a lack of health insurance can be devastating)

- Not everyone with a minimum wage job is able to work all the hours they would like to work.

And that is without touching on whether or not you think a 54 hour work week is a reasonable thing to ask someone, possibly with children, to be working at some unfulfilling minimum wage job.

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

>Canada has free health care, blunting the impact of a low wage job without benefits

Health care isn't free, it's just heavily subsidized. Depending on your province, you can expect to pay about $750 a year to cover your end of basic coverage. Vision, dental, and prescriptions aren't covered, and most people have supplementary coverage for them.

Of course, for low wage earners and students there are various programs in place that can drop the amount you pay to basically nil. There's no deductible for most things (doctors, er, surgery, etc) either, which is handy.

alphamale3000• 15 years ago

In Canada, the standard work week is 40 hours. Often it's 37.5.

52? 6 days a week? Not every job allows for it. You want to abolish week-ends? Come on.

tseabrooks• 15 years ago

You mentioned your numbers are for Canada but I'd like to point out some things about the US.

8 hours a day is the norm here. A lot of the minimum wage workers (lower than 10$ an hour) work even fewer than the 40 hours that would constitute full time as a way to reduce businesses supposed obligation to cover healthcare / 401k / etc. I've seen in my experience many workers get cut off between 35 and 38 hours in a week to avoid this.

I would anticipate that very few people, less than 5%, of people making over 26k in the US work more than 54 hours a week... It just isn't done that way here.

halostatue2• 15 years ago

…or they're doing so at more than one job.

Shenglong4• 15 years ago

It's the norm here in Canada too. There's a trade-off you need to make though, between making a lot of money, and making little.

My father worked three jobs when I was growing up, to support our family. He never complained about wealth inequality; he just did what he had to. Sure, it'd be nice if everyone got paid a lot of money - but since that's never going to happen, people might need to adjust what the norm is.

nknight3• 15 years ago

As a fairly young person whose health isn't that great, I find your assertion that 54 hours/week is "not too much to ask" to be disturbing, to say the least, particularly for that kind of crap pay.

I'm lucky when I can do a full 40, and I make a lot more than $26k. A LOT more.

Shenglong4• 15 years ago

Yeah, that is pretty crap pay, and I certainly wouldn't work 54 hours a week for it - but that's because I can get much more, for about the same amount of work. That isn't the same for everyone.

Several of my friends, while great people, unfortunately have a close-to-minimum-wage skill set. I'm just saying that these people who are making so little could make more, if they put in more time.

AgentConundrum5• 15 years ago

There are currently only five provinces/territories in Canada that mandate a minimum wage at or above $10/hour. Those are Ontario, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Newfoundland, and Nunavut. Even then, Manitoba and Nova Scotia only made it to that level on the first of this month. Nunavut is an anomaly in and of itself because everything is expensive as hell up there - it has a ridiculous cost of living from what I'm told - because it's remote and shipping supplies is costly.

Also, why do you think it's acceptable for people to only have one day a week away from work? Why is a nine hour workday acceptable? Are you taking into consideration that lower income workers are more likely to have to live further from work, and use public transportation to get to and from their place of employment (or to the grocery store, etc. but that's outside of my argument). So these people should have to work nine hours a day, plus any unpaid breaks they take. IIRC, my girlfriend is paid for breaks but not for lunch, so let's add a half an hour to this example to accommodate that. So we're at 9.5 hours per day, six days per week. Now, the worker has to walk to their bus stop - and to do it early so as not to possibly miss the bus - and maybe take a 15, or even 30, minute bus ride. They do that twice a day, to get to and from work. That's adding possibly an hour, or even more, to their day. So you're advocating that asking someone to spend nearly 11 hours a day, six days a week?

My first job out of college, doing some shitty COBOL programming, was 42.5 hours per week (40 working hours, plus an unpaid half hour a day for lunch). Because I was making enough cash to afford it, I lived within walking distance of work. It added maybe 15 minutes per day to walk to and from my job. I made between 38 and 43k for this, depending on when in my employment you asked me.

So why does it make so much sense for you to ask someone to spend an average of 66 hours a week of their time to make $28k, when I spent about 44 hours a week to make $43k?

I'm not even including the few weeks that I had to put in extra hours - no week ever really exceeding 60 hours from my recollection - at various crunch times, since I was paid out for that time, and the outlier in time was met by an outlier in pay. My hourly wage exceeded minimum wage by more than double, so including that would only skew the calculations further away from your argument.

Shenglong4• 15 years ago

So why does it make so much sense for you to ask someone to spend an average of 66 hours a week of their time to make $28k, when I spent about 44 hours a week to make $43k?

Why did you include commute time in their payment, and exclude it in yours?

I'm not sure what you're doing, but even in my summer internship I spent a good 10-11 hours a day, excluding commute time working. I wasn't even paid hourly. Most of my friends working proper jobs, in finance and tech spend at least 10 hours a day working - usually more.

halostatue2• 15 years ago

Your math is suspect even here in Canada. First, for nonexempt employees (hourly), anything over 40 hours is considered overtime (1.5 rate); there may be a second point where it's double-time, but I'm not sure. So employees who can work 54 hours a week (which is an unreasonable working time, IMO) 52 weeks a year (which is also unreasonable in a civilized society) and their employers give it to them, will make more than $28k (by about $70 / week).

The Federal Minimum Wage in the U.S. is $7.25.

hugh37• 15 years ago

These numbers seem implausibly low. How are they derived?

It says they come from W-2 filings. But do they bother to match up different W-2 filings from the same person? i.e. if I work two part-time jobs, are those added up? Or even if I switch jobs part way through the year?

Of course it doesn't include income from non-work sources (investment income etc), though that shouldn't change the median that much since people in the lower half don't have all that much in passive income.

Of course it doesn't include tips either (or it can -- reporting of tips on W-2s is, as I understand it, complicated and whatever the law is, it isn't followed).

tsotha2• 15 years ago

Why do they seem low? $26k is $13/hr for someone working full time. There are a whole lot of people making less than $13/hr.

hugh37• 15 years ago

There are a lot of 'em, but I doubt they account for 50% of the working population.

geogra42• 15 years ago

A lot of people live in a bubble where the only people they know where those who they went to (expensive private) college and (wealthy suburban) high school with. At that point you literally never get to come in contact with people not as fortunate as yourself. You get to believe that everyone had the same opportunities that you had, and that those who are earning less are just lazy or entitled. I'm not accusing the parent of that, just bringing some perspective to the debate.

thret2• 15 years ago

The legal minimum wage in Australia is $15.51, about $16 USD. I realise Americans are poor, but I had no idea it was so bad.

rauljara3• 15 years ago

I do think that looking at all workers is a valid metric of how we're doing as a nation, but it is important to remember that all workers does include those working part time. It is a valid metric because there are many people out there who would like to be working full time who are not, but it can be misleading because it sort of looks like everyone took a pay cut. But that isn't the case. Some people took a pay cut. Some people had their hours cut. Some people got laid off and could only find a part time job to replace their full time job with.

rdtsc3• 15 years ago

> Some people took a pay cut. Some people had their hours cut. Some people got laid off and could only find a part time job to replace their full time job with.

At the end of the day that still looks like a collective pay cut. Some took a part-time pay cut, some took a paycut down to 0.

From what I hear from people working in retail (I am sure it is true for other places as well), employers are cutting everyone to part time hours so they don't have to pay benefits. So people find 2 part time jobs to make ends meet. They effectively work full time and more , but now they don't have health benefits. First trip to the hospital and it is all over, they can't get out of dept, ever.

rauljara3• 15 years ago

Wouldn't disagree with you at all.

beej713• 15 years ago

Some 30% of Americans have a Bachelor's Degree or higher.

According to the Census, the median income for people with a Master's Degree is $54K (for ages 25-64), while those with only a High School diploma get $22K.

We need to improve our education situation 15 years ago, IMHO.

Edit: I'm going to edit this because people seem to think I'm suggesting a causal relationship here. I'm not. People with Master's Degrees tend to be highly trained in their field. It's not particularly surprising they tend to earn more.

If you invest the time to make yourself less replaceable, you will earn more money.

nobody314159• 15 years ago

So if everybody in the country had a masters degree people would all earn 2.5x as much?

Obviously an increase in PhD programs in french-fry frying would raise incomes even further.

beej713• 15 years ago

The point is not to make money. The point is not to get a PhD. The point isn't even to get a degree.

The point, if you want a job, is to be competitive in a cutting edge field.

I'll start worrying about what happens when everyone has a Master's Degree when 20% of the population has a Master's Degree.

rdtsc3• 15 years ago

<sarcasm> Clearly they all need to apply to Phoenix University, get a $60K loan from Uncle Sam so they too can get that sweet $54K job </sarcasm>

Not saying that education is not lacking but rather that there is a already a predatory system set up to get this people deeper in dept without necessarily providing a better chance at getting job.

MrWestley5• 15 years ago

The problem is that those degrees don't mean anything in most professions. They are used by those with the degree to get more money and used by the employers to pay less to those that don't have them. I know in my profession I have worked to MIT grads that are just a stupid as those with no degree.

sp3322• 15 years ago

Statistics like this just encourage people to spend lots of money on useless degrees that will take a long time to pay off. (I know some of these people.) I doubt a philosophy degree will get you more money anywhere other than as a philosophy professor.

beej713• 15 years ago

If they were educated properly, they'd know better before they got to college. Again, IMHO.

shazam• 15 years ago

Not to take away from the point, but I'm always initially skeptical of statistics.

For example, this is also true:

50% of all taxpayers make less than the median EVERY DAY

scarmig• 15 years ago

An actually interesting statistic: two thirds of workers make less than the average every day.

That should disturb you, especially in comparison to that stat decades ago.

rmah2• 15 years ago

To those who say "someone can do two jobs and make more" and such... These stats are compiled on SSN basis by the Social Security Administration. Thus, I think they include any number of jobs a person may hold at any time over the course of the year.

Further, this data does not include dividends, capital gains or interest. Should be fairly obvious which end of the curve gets the lion's share of that.

dextorious2• 15 years ago

Actually most middle class Americans, and basically all Americans in IT jobs commenting on the web, have no frigging idea of how the "other half lives"...

dextorious2• 15 years ago

Besides checking being poor by yourself (which will come easy for a lot of people in the current economy), and/or hanging around poor neighborhoods and making friends, I recommend "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed

A small road trip in South Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama et al would also be insightful.

BrandonM2• 15 years ago

> Further, this data does not include dividends, capital gains or interest. Should be fairly obvious which end of the curve gets the lion's share of that.

But it also doesn't include unreported income, public grants, welfare, food assistance programs, Medicare, Medicaid, retirement funds, pensions, Social Security, receipt of charity, etc.

It also fails to realize that some of those low-income workers are homemakers who only work a few hours a week to get out of the house, teenagers and young adults just working for spending money, and retired elderly who are looking to stay active and supplement their fixed income without working too hard.

I'm not against social assistance by any means, but trumpeting misinformation only serves to muddy the waters and harm productive discussion.

aasarava2• 15 years ago

The actual raw data is here: http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2010

My first thought was to think, Wow this really provides a strong counterargument to people who keep touting the fact that 47% of US citizens don't pay any income taxes (other than FICA). Also I was shocked to see that "The 1%" included essentially anyone making over $200K. [edit: i originally made a mistake and said $100K]

But in looking more closely, I can't tell if the numbers are based from individual W2s (meaning a single individual with two jobs might contribute two separate data points), on individual taxpayers, or individual tax filings (maybe a family).

I suspect it's one of the first two. And if that's the case, these numbers can't directly be applied to stats about poverty levels or the "99%" and the "1%" and the "47%" figures being slung around these days.

For instance, these numbers include part time workers, such as teenagers with after-school jobs. At minimum wage, working 4 hours a day for 6 days a week for 50 weeks, this person might earn ~$8K.

So it's likely that some part of that first 25% on the chart are part-time workers.

That's not to say that there aren't some families doing everything they can to make just $8K in a year, but rather that the percentages would sound different if we built the chart using only data from tax returns (not W2s) and stripped out everyone who was not attempting to work full time to support themselves or a family.

Can someone provide insight that would either debunk or validate my assumptions above?

yummyfajitas3• 15 years ago

Here is data on part time workers. About 1/4 of workers are part time (about 34 million people).

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat19.txt

About 3/4 of those who are part time are voluntarily part time (i.e., not because they can't find full time work).

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat20.txt

rmah2• 15 years ago

The data only includes the types of compensation that are subject to FICA. This includes only salaries, wages, bonuses, profit sharing and tips. It does not include dividends, capital gains (includes things like options) and interest income.

The data does include part time workers, including students. There aren't that many teens and college students in the US (only about 10% of the population). It also includes some retired people working part time jobs.

I think the IRS and the US Census publishes similar data but uses total compensation. IIRC, the median moves up a bit (but still under $30k) while the top end skews upwards dramatically.

onedognight• 15 years ago

> Also I was shocked to see that "The 1%" included essentially anyone making over $100K.

It looks like it's anyone making over $200k not $100k if I'm reading it correctly.

aasarava2• 15 years ago

Ah, thanks for the correction! I've updated my comment above.

hugh37• 15 years ago

Also, that's wages, not income. Most truly rich people (and a great many fairly rich people) derive their income from non-wage sources.

spenrose2• 15 years ago

A large fraction of the 47% are the elderly. The evil rank dishonesty of the people who started this meme (not the useful ignorant who spread it) is highlighted by the fact that the elderly are their electoral base. Rich men are encouraging senior citizens watching Fox to think that "they" are freeloaders ... and using those same senior citizens to inflate the number of supposed freeloaders. That's on TOP of not including payroll, sales, and other taxes with regressive distributions when they calculate tax burden.

jquery2• 15 years ago

I don't think this invalidates the point. The elderly can still vote.

protomyth4• 15 years ago

going to the linked pages, I find this part a little more interesting (National average wage index):

  2006	38,651.41
  2007	40,405.48
  2008	41,334.97
  2009	40,711.61
  2010	41,673.83

tomkarlo5• 15 years ago

The average is frankly, fairly uninteresting given what the distribution looks like. It's not a "typical" income, or the 50th percentile. It's just basically the sum of income divided by the number of earners.

Reminds me of the old saw about how when Bill Gates walks into a bar, everyone turns into a millionaire, on average.

protomyth4• 15 years ago

Well, I was interested because 2009 is the only dip year in their data. The distribution data is not as interesting to me given what they ignore in income and location.

protomyth4• 15 years ago

This is one of those charts that is great for grant writing (if you get your local area data) or making a point in an article, but doesn't really tell you the whole story. It doesn't list all the income and really doesn't give you a real picture based on family make-up. Don't get me wrong, its useful data, but it can be used in a very poor manner.

Alex3917• 15 years ago

It's a lot scarier once you realize that only 45% of Americans are workers. What this actually means is that 87.5% of Americans are earning less than $26,000.

krschultz• 15 years ago

But a good number of them are 0-16 so are entirely unable to work, and many others are over 65 and are unlikely to work.

smattiso• 15 years ago

This is only for income reported on a W2, i.e. employees. So the "top 1%" is the top 1% of individuals paid by a company, not the actual owners themselves (although I suppose they could be the same). The top 1% include a ton of business owners.

50% of All Workers Made Less than $26,000 in 2010

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