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NewsFlash: June 18, 2008 

Wages surge for topmost sliver

As a scene from a summer movie, a chart showing the rapid rise of salaries for the nation’s highest paid wage earners would put Edward Norton’s dramatic transformation into the Incredible Hulk to shame. Today’s Snapshot by EPI president Lawrence Mishel illustrates the fast-growing gap between the nation’s highest earners – the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent – and the bottom 90 percent.  Just how fast is the gap growing? In 1979, it took the top 0.1 percent of earners roughly 12 ½ days of work to get paid what the average worker in the bottom 90 percent got for the whole year – but by 2004 that feat was accomplished in under four days. 

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