source In the United States, for example, wages of less-skilled workers have fallen steeply since the late 1970s relative to those of the more skilled. Between 1979 and 1988 the average wage of a college graduate relative to the average wage of a high school graduate rose by 20 percent and the average weekly earnings of males in their forties to average weekly earnings of males in their twenties rose by 25 percent. This growing inequality reverses a trend of previous decades (by some estimates going back as far as the 1910s) toward greater income equality between the more skilled and the less skilled. At the same time, the average real wage in the United States (that is, the average wage adjusted for inflation) has grown only slowly since the early 1970s and the real wage for unskilled workers has actually fallen. It has been estimated that male high school dropouts have suffered a 20 percent decline in real wages since the early 1970s.
"In the United States, for example, wages of less-skilled workers have fallen steeply since the late 1970s relative to those of the more skilled."
Do you understand the implications of the word "relative", as bolded above?
That doesn't mean that wages of less-skilled workers actually declined. No, it means that those wages didn't rise as fast as the wages of others.
It is simply a dishonest writer who used the term "declined" inline with "relative" that is at issue, as that writer clearly meant to decieve you, and seems to have succeeded in convincing you that wages of less skilled workers actually declined, rather than declined **relative** to the enormous raises of others (in other words, didn't decline at all in real terms).