Salaries in the New Economy

Sunday's Parade magazine featured the What People Earn story, which has become an annual event. The contrasts of megastar salaries with working class salaries is always bound to stimulate discussion by the office water cooler.

This year Jennifer Aniston is front and center, a 40 year old actress pulling down a cool 27 million. The smiling face of baseball player Alex Rodriguez is on the upper right of the front page, his 34 million dollar income displayed below. By way of contrast, sports blogger Josh Bacott to his left is making $10,700.

Barbie, the doll from Malibu who turned fifty this year, is pictured here as well. $3.3 billion. And by way of contrast, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, has an interesting expression on his face, with his one dollar salary listed for this assignment which carries fairly hefty responsibilities I would guess.

Others listed inside include Guv Sarah Palin at $125,000 along with rapper Jay-Z at $82 million. But there are a lot of ordinary folks here, too. A library director, a truck driver, website manager, probation officer, carpenter, sales rep, tugboat captain... there's a whole range of occupations listed here. I guess we value our celebrities and sports stars 'cause we sure pay them a lot.

According to the article, weekly income rose 2.5% in 2008, and personal savings increased as well. But in another place, one finds less thrilling stats. Unemployment for high school dropouts is over 12% and even college grads are seeing layoffs. This undoubtedly accounts for the shift in attitudes among many for the time being. According to an employment consultant quoted in the article, people are more concerned about job security than they are about job excitement at this time.

Personally, I can't tell whether these kinds of articles help us or hurt us. I can imagine that for some, these salary comparisons only stir up envy and jealousy. They don't show the sacrifices many of these people made to achieve what they've got. Though on the other hand, in many instances the rest of the story has not yet been told. Most of the images are of smiling faces, but we can't always see what's behind the smiles. In the end, we do get an interesting picture of what has value in our culture today.

You can read George Anders' What People Earn here.