Report: Wage gap has widened in Virginia

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Report: Wage gap has widened in Virginia

By: John Reid Blackwell
Published: October 12, 2011

The income gap between high-wage and low-wage workers in Virginia has widened during the economic slowdown and is now at a 30-year high, according to a report released Tuesday.

In 2010, the top 10 percent of wage earners in Virginia earned almost six times more than the bottom 10 percent of wage earners, according to the report by the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a Richmond-based think tank.
....

The top 10 percent of wage earners in Virginia saw their pay grow more than 10 percent on average from 2007 to 2010, three times the average increase nationally. ... Yet workers in the bottom 20 percent saw a 4.3 percent decline in wages. That was more than five times the decline experienced by the same group nationally, according to the report.

That puts Virginia second only to New Jersey in the largest gap between high-wage and low-wage earners, according to the report.

Gap between high and low earners widens in Virginia

By: Steve Contorno | 10/11/11 8:05 PM
Examiner Staff Writer

The wage gap between the highest and lowest earners in Virginia is the second highest in the country and it has widened significantly since the start of the recession in 2007.
....

A study by the Commonwealth Institute in Richmond released Tuesday shows the lowest 30 percent of earners suffered a decrease in wages when adjusted for inflation between 2007 and 2010, while the top 10 percent of workers saw their wages go up more than 10 percent.

The result is that the top 10 percent of earners in Virginia make 5.72 times more in wages than the bottom 10 percent -- a gap that is second only to New Jersey. The ratio in D.C. was 5.35-to-1 and in Maryland 5.21-to-1.
....

Virginia's median income in 2010 was $60,674, 21 percent higher than the national average and ninth highest in the country. As a whole, the state also weathered the recession better than most and the median wage actually increased 2 percent from 2009 to 2010. ... But that figure was pulled up by higher-level wage earners who saw their pay increase from 2007 to 2010 at a rate much greater than the national average. Even median income workers' wages went up about 5 percent, compared with less than 1 percent gains across the country. Meanwhile, the bottom 30 percent saw losses well beyond the national average.

[e-mail]