[Southack]

"Averages can hide quite a few shifts. First of all, if there are a couple of million unemployed people who are no longer getting a salary, that doesn't show up on your averages radar. And salaries at the high end can increase significantly and still mask reductions in the middle and lower ranges.

If I have a whole lot of people competing for a very few jobs, will **average** salaries go up or go down?

[dirtboy]

If I have a whole lot of people competing for a very few jobs, will **average** salaries go up or go down?

If two people make $50K a year and one person makes $200K a year, the average salary is $100K. If one person is laid off, the other goes to $30K and the last person goes to $300K a year, the average goes up, yet two of the three are in worse shape. Plus a lot of people have just given up looking for work, and they don't even enter the equation.