Changes in Incomes from 1960 to 2014

TheBigPicture shared a link to an article Shifting Incomes for American Jobs from Flowing Data site.
I of course got excited, because I mean who wouldn't get excited?    Flowing Data has created an interactive graphic that shows the distribution of incomes for various general occupational groups for 1960, 1980, 2000 and 2014.    !!!      If you go play around with the graphic and click on the different years you can see circles for each group bounce up and down between the income levels.  

Many occupations gained in incomes over time with more people making higher incomes.    Some occupations mostly stayed the same.  

Unfortunately it looks like the construction industry lost ground overall.   Just looking at the dots in the graphic and doing a manual count it looks to me like the median income dropped from around $35-40k in 1960 to more like $25-30k in 2014.     Overall, then wages in construction were down for most people.     Thats not good.   A handful of people in construction did better but only at the top.     In both 1960 and 2014 about 20% of the trades made over $50k.        However in 1960 nobody made over $75k but by 2014 there are 3 people making that much.  

But as I said, other occupations were either up or flat.    Construction appears to be about the only exception.   Thats good news.   For the most part across the occupations it was the top 20-50% that saw gains and the rest stayed where they were.    

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