Quote:work force participation ( the amount of the population employed or seeking employment)  source http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

 



Median Income adjusted for inflation

 



 

From 1999-2009 you had a decline of median income by 5% in direct correlation with a dropping workforce population. Simply put there was MORE jobs than people qualified to WORK so it becomes an employers market.

This seems like one of those charts that can mean a whole lot of things based on what you want it to say. For example it backs up what you are saying. It could also mean wages dropped because companies were laying off people at high pay due to economy issues and wanting to pad profits. Then they put the jobs back out there at much lower salaries and people that were laid off either are not going back into the job market yet or a holding out to get close to their previous salary. They was a ton of that going on around this time and seems like a plausibly reasonable way to interpret this data. 

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