When you actually follow the same people, the poor see the greater increase in income than the most wealthy. You may poo-poo a $30K inflation-adjusted increase in pay, but that moves someone from the lower class to the middle class.
Isn't that the goal?
It's akin to arguing that wage growth is looking at income of a person that was flipping burgers while in school 10 years ago now leads an engineering team.
It's not the same job, not the adequate comparison.
I presume you work in IT related field, so imagine you decided to take a break and be a parking lot attendant... You cannot then quote your own example as an instance of falling wages for IT workers.
And it doesn't matter if it's not the same job. The argument has always been about opportunity and the key point of this article is for people who start out in the lowest income quintile, the average wages doubles over time.
That's opportunity.
Except that wage growth debate isn't about opportunity. He's trying to argue about oranges, when the initial issue is about apples.
Arguments about wage growth are about costs, productivity and compensation.
As in - if you're 2x more productive at doing the same job, then the gains are deposited somewhere.
The argument in the end is that productivity gains are not distributed at a fair level. Equal isn't ever a requirement for a stable society, fair is enough.
And the folks tracked in this study were from 40 to retirement, so I don't see a change in career being a major driver for the income growth.