the buzz word for our economy for the last 20 years has been service sector oriented...non manufaturing. Which means for the most part if you are not a professional...$7.00/hour retail if you are lucky...most start at around $6.00/hour. I'm sure there will be big city folks that flame me and mention free trade and all the other baloney...go ahead.
chasio, want to hear something sad? When I was a SATO Government Travel Agent on Loring Air Force Base up here, I was making $8.64 an hour. I forget what I started at. But 7.5 years later, I was up to $8.64.
I ask one of the girls at SATO down at Rome, New York, and she was making $13 dollars an HOUR doing the same work as me! And she even had less time on the job!
I ask my boss "what is going on here," and she told me that it was because of "my location." Maine. Boy, was I pissed!