Reply #14: I wish I had a link or some piece of info to support this but [View All]

I don't. I heard it on talk radio during my drive back from visiting my parents at Thanksgiving. I caught the tail end of the discussion but one of the people was shooting down the claim that wages had increased by over 20% in the last 10 years. His point was the people producing these statistics were taking the rising cost of health insurance into account. Even though there are actually LESS benefits being offered today, the tremendous increases in health insurance are being used to make the value of the total benefit package appear to be 20% higher than a decade ago. He also said the statistic is even more misleading than it might initially appear because health insurance has increased far more than 20% in ten years. Since they claim the net increase in employee compensation is only 20-22%, that must mean other benefits and/or wages have gone down considerably.