This article is from February. Wages, at that point, were increasing a little faster than inflation. They’re now increasing considerably faster than inflation outside manufacturing, which is confronting the twin headwinds of automation and export...erm...difficulties. Fortunately, a solid (and shrinking) minority of Americans work are exposed.
From February 2009, the year after the crisis, through February 2018, when this article was published, average seasonally-adjusted hourly earnings of American private-sector employees rose by 2.2% per year [1][a]. From February through July, the same statistic rose at an annualized rate of 5.9% [b]. The former approximates inflation; the latter dramatically exceeds it.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003
[a] (26.74 / 22) ^ (1 / 9) - 1
[b] (27.05 / 26.74) ^ (1 / (1 / 5)) - 1
The 2007-09 "bear market...lasted from October 9th 2007 to March 9th 2009" [1]. Using the same data as before [2] we find similarly-paltry 2.2% annualized wage growth between October 2007 and October 2017 [a].
Your counterargument is not only inaccurate, it also makes no sense. My argument relies on the former number being smaller than the latter. Picking a low baseline presents my evidence in its most conservative form.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bear_market_of_2...
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003
[a] (26.47 / 21.06) ^ (1 / 10) - 1
Comparing down is not helpful. The government is supposed to be striving up and not letting things settle compared to a low baseline or slide down.
If you're arguing that the situation is within bounds of some sort of cycle or variance, you get to show evidence for bounded variance (e.g. bands) and arguments on how much of it is normal.
My argument was that wage growth in the last few months has been significant; before that it was insignificant. So yes, the average American is earning more (in real terms) than in the 1800s, 1950s or even mid-2000s. But that wasn’t the argument.
Data on BLS shows wages going from $26.34 in July 2017 to $27.05 in July 2018 [1]. That is 2.7% wage growth.
CPI data from July 2017 to July 2018 shows 2.9% increase for all items [2].
This is negative real wage growth over the past 12-months. It's also worth keeping in mind that these are average wages, so they would be susceptible to wage movements at the higher-end (as there is no upper-bound).
[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.b.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
(27.05 / 26.74) ^ (1 / (5 / 12)) - 1 = 2.8%
An improvement, but hardly a spectacular one, and nowhere near 5.9%.