ABSTRACT

The State of Working America 1994-95 presents a comprehensive statistical portrait of the standard of living of America's working families. The

data show that the economy has recovered from the early 1990s recession. Jobs have grown and the unemployment rate has fallen substantially. But the longer-term labor-force maladies of the 1980s (the middle-class squeeze, falling wages among the non-college-educated workforce, growing wage and income inequality) have not been cured, as illustrated by the fact that median family income fell in every year from 1989 to 1993, a period including two years of recovery. Thus, with overall growth restored, the core problem facing working Americans is the long-term erosion of their ability to obtain, and keep, good jobs that sustain middle-class incomes. If present trends persist, then the median hourly wage of male workers will continue to fall 1% annually for the rest of the decade, entry-level wages for high school graduates will fall even faster, and the median hourly wage of female workers will grow only modestly.