The Wall Street Journal had an article in yesterday’s decade in review section that provided some sorry metrics (for most Americans) for the 00’s. The charts really sum it up:
Change in personal income: +5 Percent
Change in net worth: -14 percent
Change in employment: +0.5 percent
They note that the economy gained virtually no jobs while the population grew by 35 million. It is not clear what percentage of those 35 million entered the workforce however. It would have been good if they would have included a measure of the change in one of the cost of living metrics.