Daniel Gross’ NYT column (h/t to New Economist) makes the oft-repeated point that an increase in average incomes doesn’t necessarily mean that most people are better off; it could also mean that the distribution of incomes is getting more unequal.
Canada’s been seeing some positive employment and wage data, recently. But is it just a skewed mirage?
Here’s a graph of average real weekly earnings for full-time employees:
And here is the median:
The mean growth rate of average real wages was about 0.4% a year, while that of median real wages was only 0.18%. Even though the median worker has seen real gains since 1997, her earnings have gone from 91.2% of the average to 89.7% of the average. Canada isn’t immune from the general trend of increasing inequality in incomes.
But there’s one thing that I don’t understand from those graphs: why is the median so much more volatile than the average?
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
I have no special insight as to your stats, so this is pure speculation as opposed to informed comment, but here goes:
I’m inclined to think that the median is more volatile than the mean for the same reason that a stock in a 100 stock index is more volatile than the index itself. It only represents 1% of the total (mean) average.
Stocks tend to move to a large degree as a group, but they also “do their own thing” as well. Same would seem to logically apply to median earnings. The scale you used makes it look more volatile than it really is in my opinion. Use a scale of 4.00 to 7.00 and yes there will still be more volatility (how can it be otherwise?), but it won’t look “very” volatile.
I agree with happyjuggler0. If you use the same scale in both charts (say a range of 0.25 as in the top one) and it won’t look that volatile.