Workers Lost Ground During Recession As Bosses Gained

The U.S. economy’s anemic rebound from the worst recession in six decades is pummeling workers while leaving bosses almost unscathed and neither President Barack Obama nor Republican challenger Mitt Romney is captivating these disaffected voters five months before the national election.

Between 2007 and 2010, working-class people — those in nonprofessional occupations who lack college degrees — saw their median earnings fall 4.6 percent, according to a study of U.S. census data prepared for Bloomberg News by Sentier Research of Annapolis, Maryland. Over the same period, earnings for college-educated professionals or managers rose 1.9 percent.

Working-class males were especially hard hit, with median annual earnings falling 6.6 percent, more than three times the 1.9 percent loss suffered by all employees, according to the study, an effort to quantify the recession’s impact on labor.