What You Have to Earn to Be in the 1% in Every State
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute says that the benefits from the economic recovery are being enjoyed by the nation’s top 1% of income earners while the rest of us still languish with relatively stagnant, even falling, wages.
Overall income grew by nearly 37% since 1979, but growth for “1 Percenters” was some 181%. When factoring the 1% out, the 99% saw their income grow only by 2.6%. Moreover, after the recovery from the Great Recession, the top 1% have enjoyed “an alarming share of economic growth.” According to University of California/Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, who is cited in the report, the top 1% captured 95% of the total income growth between 2009 and 2012.
“In previous recoveries, the majority of income growth was accounted for by the bottom 99 percent,” said Mark Price, a labor economist who co-authored the study.