Wages need to rise to keep up with inflation, especially since the value of the dollar has been trashed:

But Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Hamilton Project document (hat tip Ezra Klein) that real median earnings for men declined between 1969 and 2009:

And wages have only kept dropping since 2009.

In addition – when those who have only part-time work are taken into account – we have depression-level unemployment.

As Klein notes:

When you take all men, not just those working fulltime, into account, the slight decline in the above graph becomes a plummet of 28 percent in median real wages from 1969 to 2009.

The bottom line is that – due to idiotic government policy – most of the jobs being created are part-time and low wage jobs.