"Average" anything in populations with large ranges is a terrible, terrible measure. As the joke goes, Bill Gates walks into a bar, and on average everyone in the bar is a millionaire.
Median is the appropriate statistic for such cases.
Median is the appropriate statistic for such cases.
It's fine if you want to focus on median wages, but at the same time you need to compare against the median worker's economic output- not aggregate productivity. Otherwise you're just comparing apples to oranges.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=bOfK
Note the increasing spread between GDP/household and median income. That's the US's entire socioeconomic problem--from rising consumer debt levels, rising deaths of despair, and the rise of reactionary politics--shown in one chart. The median person is falling behind.