Charting the Disparity in U.S. Hourly Wages

The American economy has been improving, but you wouldn’t know that if you talked to voters—both Republican and Democrat.

There are good reasons for all the disgruntlement. Inflation-adjusted wages have been flat for decades, but productivity (the goods and services workers produce per hour) has risen steadily. That means that people are being compensated far less than they should be for the work they’re doing. And among these U.S. workers, not everyone is on equal footing. The top 1 percent is making 25 times as much everyone else, and despite modest improvements, racial and gender disparities just refuse to go away.