Throughout the history of this country we have had a roller coaster of a ride but the trend was always upward. Across the peaks and valleys of progress each generation somehow managed to do a bit better than the preceding one until now. The following clip is from the AARP Bulletin, March 2017.
Whether we can attribute this to Globalism or automation or a combination of the two, this is a disturbing trend.
Just a few days ago I heard an economist on talk radio discussing the need to tax industrial robots at the income rate of the humans they replaced. That way the government could maintain status quo without worrying about those pesky unemployed folks.
I don’t have the answers but I do want my kids to do better than me in the game of life. It’s time to recognize that this wage reversal is a serious problem and needs to be addressed, not merely recognized as existing.
Thoughts from the blogosphere?
rixlibris 
If it’s any consolation, I was 22 in 1989. I made minimum wage and lived mostly on Spaghettios. So if you use me as the sample of 1989 young adults, the kids these days aren’t doing so badly.
Thanks for your comment, It’s all so relative but there are plenty of examples of living the not so rosy life, even from my era. As a young enlisted person with a wife and lacking the pay grade for the military to transport her, or house us on separate rations, I had to take an advance in pay to bring her to Europe. There was no one for her to stay with in the US and she didn’t have the maturity or temperament to make it on her own. Long story, not a happy ending.
I was NPD (no pay due) for six months and had to pull my regular duty and then sack groceries at the commissary for tips in order to make living expenses.
My first sergeant made this remark, “if the US Air Force thought that you needed a family they would have been issued to you.” You do what you gotta do.”
The problem with the downward pressure on wages is that there has been no matching downward pressure on prices.