My thought is that a rise in wages of those still working when Obama was elected in 2008 would be dramatically offset by the 100% decrease in wages of the additional people who are now chronically unemployed. As example, at the time of Obama’s election, approximately 66.2% of the labor age workforce had a job. The current labor participation rate is approximately 62.4%.
If, for example, we said the overage wage in late 2008 was $40K per person and those working now make 9% more six years later, but there has been a 6% decrease in the amount of working age people making that wage, the net wage increase for the people working in 2008 over the last 6+ years is less than 3%. This excludes the effects of inflation, which puts us well into negative territory.
Average wages are just that the average of wages. A person's zero wage is not a wage to be averaged in becuase then we'd have to consider the zero wages of children, of livestock, of the dead --it could go on and on. Yeah, lots of folks say we need to care about the unemployed. Others say we need to care about the starving children in Biafra and let's not forget the ozone hole either.
Reality is something that has to be taken on its own terms and that's why we accept the fact that the average of the wages that there were went up in '09. Sure, incomes went down so that's why we see a dip in '09 for average incomes (post 19). Apparently we got lots of Freepers who really really want things to be bad and they just can't bear the thought that into every rainstorm a little sun must shine.