DOn't have the statistics with me, but when the unemployment rate is dropping, the "average" wages can go down even though the "average person's" wages can go up.
Wages are averaged either by mean or median. In either case they include only people working.
If you have an influx of people into lower-wage jobs, even though they used to make "zero" dollars and now make money, their "zero" dollar earnings were not part of the average.
So if you add 2 million jobs to the economy, but those jobs are below the average wage, you will actually PULL DOWN the average wages.
BTW, if you throw a couple of multi-millionares in jail for fraud, you will ALSO pull down the average wages.
What you WANT to compare is the average wage change for employed workers. That statistic would compare only the wages of people who did not have a substantive change in their employment on a year-to-year basis.
I can't find that number, unfortunately.
Thank you, sir. I appreciate your input and it will be passed along.