Occupy Wall StreetJulia La Roche for Business Insider  The
Social Security Department just released its calculations for
the national average wage index (AWI).  This is all compensation
(wages, tips etc.) subject to federal income tax, and is
gathered from reports by employers and W2 forms.  Here's how
they do it:  First they find something called "net
compensation," which they define as contributions to deferred
compensation plans, but excluding certain distributions from
plans where the distributions are included in the reported
compensation subject to income taxes.  In 2010 it was
$6,009,831,055,912.11.  Then they divide that number by the
number of wage earners in the U.S. That's 150,398,796 people.
The number you get, is $39,959.30.  According to their data
table (which you can see here), 66.2% of wage earners make
netted less than or equal to $39.959.30. A raw average.  They
calculated the median of that raw average to be $26,363.55— and
that's the net compensation of 50% of Americans.  Now, we
decided