“Workers’ wages buy less and less. In fact, workers have lost purchasing power during the past half-century. Comparing prices to wages, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose more than six times from 1965 to 2011—while the minimum wage rose less than five times.
Professionals also suffered. According to the Engineering Workforce Commission, a senior engineer’s salary has gone up about five and a half times. In short, workers work longer to earn money to buy the same goods.
Today’s minimum wage employee works 12 percent longer to earn a gallon of milk compared to 1965, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today’s senior engineer works almost twice as long to buy a gallon of gasoline, according to the Department of Energy.
So, in real terms, wages have fallen. The drop is larger than it appears.”