[dirtboy]

Really? What was your claim about salaries, then?!

I made no claim about salaries, but instead said the middle class was shrinking. For example, discouraged workers who used to hold a middle-class job aren't even reflected in your average salary statistics. The unemployed are not reflected, and when they are re-employed, where will the come back into the wage scale? Most of the folks I've been reading about are taking pay cuts - I was lucky to find something a bit more than I was making before. So an national average number, leaving out the people most impacted by the economic changes, is hardly a reliable indicator that things are hunky-dory for the middle class.

[Southack]

"Most of the folks I've been reading about are taking pay cuts..."

Well, if all you are reading about are IT people, then that shouldn't really surprise you.

I can tell you right now from the number of resumes that I'm getting versus the number of job openings that I have that IT is only going to get worse in the next year, and the long-term trend doesn't look very good, either.

But that's a far cry from your baseless claim that the American middle class was shrinking. IT is a very small portion of America's economy, after all.

Overall, national salaries are up. Whatever people are entering back into the market at, the overall level is up from what they were all earning last year.

I can tell you that those who are most stubborn, and who most resist change, will suffer the most in pay. If you stick in IT through the entire decline, you will be much harder hit than the guy who gets out of IT early and bounces around in a few other-industry-jobs (finally settling down, one hopes).