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The Income Gap Is Growing Very Quickly In Connecticut

By Gregory B. Hladky

December 28, 2011

Like the rest of the nation, wage increases for Connecticut's higher-income workers rose at a much faster rate than for the lowest-paid employees during the past five years, according to a new analysis.

Pay for the top 10 percent of workers rose by 14.4 percent between 2005 and 2010, researchers for Connecticut Voices for Children found. Wages for the bottom 10 percent increased by a depressing 1.3 percent for the same period. These kinds of numbers, and news about the fact that top executive pay hikes ranged from 27-40 percent last year, have given added momentum to the Occupy Wall Street movement and to the increasingly fierce political debate over growing economic inequality.

The study by the Connecticut liberal activist group, which was done in concert with a Washington, D.C.-based think tank called the Economic Policy Institute, found similarly grim wage statistics for women and black members of Connecticut's workforce. In 2007, women in this state were earning 79 percent of what their male counterparts were making. By 2010, female employees were being paid just 76 percent of what men in similar jobs were getting in wages or salary. And CT's wage gap for women is even worse than the national average of 81 percent.

CT's black workers were pulling down 72 percent of what whites were earning in comparable jobs back in 2007. Three years later that wage gap had widened, with blacks making only 67 percent of white median wages, according to the study.