If you’re the sort of person who reads economics blogs, you’ve probably heard that the median US worker has enjoyed hardly any income gain over the past few decades. ...

A mere 3% increase over 25 years does indeed look pretty grim. ...

Now let’s look a little deeper and ask which demographic groups account for all this stagnation. White men? Nope, their median income is up 15%. Nonwhite men? Up 16%. White women? Up 75%. Non-white women? Up 62%. That’s everybody ...

What gives? How can the median income shoot up in every demographic sector while the overall median remains nearly unchanged?

... Each demographic group has progressed, but at the same time, there’s been a great influx of lower income groups -- women and nonwhites -- into the workforce. This creates the illusion that nobody’s progressing when in fact everybody’s progressing.

In the words of another blogger, "You have to look behind the median." Via The Numbers Racket at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics.