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Skilled workers got better raises Return to "Sudden wealth, hard questions"
A person at the 90th percentile - whose salary was higher than 90 percent of all other workers - enjoyed an 8.5 percent increase in purchasing power. But a person at the 20th percentile in effect took a pay cut, experiencing a 2.3 percent decline in purchasing power.
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The more people earned, the more likely their pay raises outran inflation in the 1990s. This chart uses the Consumer Price Index for the Seattle-Tacoma metro area to compare the purchasing power of 1990 wages with the purchasing power of 1998 wages. Most workers barely kept pace with inflation and lower-paid workers actually lost purchasing power. A couple of examples:
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