...the numbers of millionaire households [is up] - way up to a record 8.2-million from 6.2-million a year ago. That's a whopping 33 percent gain of 2-million new households to achieve millionaire status in just the past year from June 2003 to June 2004....

Nationally, 3.3-million households have achieved or regained millionaire status since 2002....

The addition of 2-million households in one year to the millionaire market is the largest increase recorded by the TNS study, which began monitoring affluent Americans in 1981....

--Robert Trigaux in the St. Petersburg Times


Real average weekly earnings fell by 0.4 percent in October for the seventh time this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Nov. 17.

After adjusting for a 0.6 percent increase in the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, BLS determined that real wages fell last month. BLS also reported that average pay was just 0.4 percent higher than a year ago after adjusting for inflation....

--International Labor Communications Association, citing this BLS report