American universities have an incentive to seem extortionate

Re:American universities have an incentive to seem extortionate by rayiner on Monday July 24, 2023 @10:09AM (#36848270)

Wage growth has more than exceeded CPI: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-hourly-wages.... You're thinking of some other measure, such as so-called "productivity growth."

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Re:American universities have an incentive to seem extortionate by rahimnathwani on Monday July 24, 2023 @10:34AM (#36848681)

I was going to object that:

- this data misses people who transitioned to gig work or other types of self-employment, and

- looking at average (mean) can be misleading due to large numbers at the top

BUT... it appears that median household income has also gone up faster than CPI, which means those objections are likely irrelevant.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

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Re:American universities have an incentive to seem extortionate by theropost on Monday July 24, 2023 @10:37AM (#36848742)

Do you have any more current data on wage growth vs inflation that include more current years? 2020/2021/2022? The data you cited stops in 2014.

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Re:American universities have an incentive to seem extortionate by HDMI_Cable on Monday July 24, 2023 @10:27AM (#36848544)

You're probably right, but one caveat: this graph shows average hourly earnings, which may not account for inequality. If some percentage of the population has had their wages rise much faster than everyone else, it could be that most people have had their real wage decline, while the average is still above CPI growth.

Now that I think about it, it also tracks hourly earnings, and if a non-insignificant people work hourly, but have been scheduled less hours (due to automation, or reduced need for labor), then their hourly earnings may have gone up, but their take-home pay gone down.

If anyone has any statistics for either of these, that would be very useful.

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