Businessweek median earnings numbers - what?

My life has stopped, but I continue to age," deadpans Karen Levine, a Wharton School MBA who has worked at General Mills (GIS ), Unilever, Deloitte Consulting, Condé Nast, and Hearst. She has even served as a Six Sigma Black Belt at NBC (GE ). But in real terms, Levine made more in 1988 fresh out of Harvard College than she earns today in the marketing department at Hachette Filipacchi Media US Inc., where she's temporarily filling in for a woman on maternity leave. During her two years of battling unemployment, Levine has worked for $8 an hour at Pottery Barn and for $18 an hour as a temp for a Wall Street trading firm. "I can't even afford a dog," she says.