NewsFlash: Wages surge for topmost sliver
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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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