Decreasing wages continue trend that helped cause Great Recession

Several recent articles highlight both the continuing pressure on workers’ wages as well how decreasing wages helped cause the Great Recession in the first place.

This article points to a troubling reality that even for those unemployed people fortunate to find a new job, that new job often means a decrease in wages and living standards.

This article describes how the entire annual increase in health care costs is being borne by employees with employer health insurance instead of being borne by the employers. This is but one example of the skyrocketing cost of health care over the years has eaten away at any wages gains for the working class.

Finally, this extremely insightful op-ed by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich describes how the generation-long erosion of working-class wages helped fuel the debt boom that ended in the Great Recession. Unless and until serious measures are enacted to improve the wages of the working class, we will not experience a sustainable recovery or return to general prosperity.