American workers can’t catch a break.

Whether you make minimum wage or you’re considered middle class, pay checks are not keeping up with productivity growth among the rank and file, and compared to the top corporate honchos your wallets are anorexic.

Here’s the latest from the Associated Press:

If 6,694 people earning minimum wage worked for one year, they collectively would have made as much as the highest-paid CEO last year of a Standard & Poor’s 500 company.

When the minimum wage rises from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, it will take 4,755.

That’s roughly the equivalent of 1,434 people earning $50,000; or 574 people earning $125,000 a year.

And there was more disheartening news from a group called the Economic Mobility Project. Turns out American men in their 30s are among the first generation to be worse off than their fathers financially, and family income just can’t catch up to the productivity gains made by workers and companies since 2000. That means any profits that came from such productivity improvements did not go in the pockets of the poor saps that did most of the running.

The study stated that “the up escalator that has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well.”

The escalator may someday end up going down. Just look at recent examples of how wages have been squashed.

Circuit City recently announced it would be laying off a bunch of sales associates and replacing them with lower wage workers. See my recent story. How can workers be expected to move forward, beyond their parents’ generation if things like this happen?

My column this week is on how many young adults are still living with their parents. I got a lot of letters from people in their early 20s after the column appeared, many angry letters telling me how I just don’t realize how hard it is out there for them to find jobs and get their lives started on their own.

While I think it’s never easy for people starting out in their careers, I must admit it may be tougher for this generation than generations before.

UPDATE: Talk about timing. The New York Times magazine today has devoted almost the entire issue to the income gap between the rich and poor. I just started reading it and there are some eye-opening articles, especially the piece on an island in Florida filled with some of the richest people on earth, and the underclass of individuals being paid next to nothing for maintaining their Shangri-La.