People at the top have seen steady wage growth for 50 years while the working class has been left behind

Real hourly wages from 1968 to 2018, in 2018 dollars

Source: Tipped minimum wages were determined based on a report by the Congressional Research Service detailing every time the federal tipped minimum wage was changed, and the values were converted to 2018 dollars using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers Research Series (CPI-U-RS). See Congressional Research Service, "The Tip Credit Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA): In Brief" (Washington: 2015), available at https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R43445.html#_Toc414623632. The real minimum and median wages in 2018 dollars were obtained from a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). See David Cooper, "Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers" (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2019), available at https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-by-2024-would-lift-pay-for-nearly-40-million-workers/. Average annual earnings for the 90th to 99th percentile in 2018 dollars were acquired from EPI and then converted to hourly wages by assuming a 40-hour work week, or 2,080 hours per year. See State of Working America Data Library, "Wages for Top 1.0%, 0.1% and Bottom 90%," available at https://www.epi.org/data/#?subject=wagegroup (last accessed February 2021). EPI also used CPI-U-RS to convert all estimates into 2018 dollars.