WASHINGTON – In a stark sign of the economic inequality that has marked the pandemic recession and recovery, Americans as a whole are earning the same amount in wages and salaries that they did before the virus struck – even with nearly 9 million fewer people working.

The turnaround in total wages underscores how disproportionately America’s job losses have afflicted workers in lower-income occupations rather than in higher-paying industries, where employees have gained jobs as well as income since early last year.

In February 2020, Americans earned $9.66 trillion in wages and salaries, at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, according to Commerce Department data.

By April, after the virus had flattened the U.S. economy, that figure had shrunk by 10%.

It then gradually recovered before reaching $9.67 trillion in December, the latest period for which data is available.

Those dollar figures include only wages and salaries that people earned from jobs.

They don’t include money that tens of millions of Americans have received from unemployment benefits or the Social Security and other aid that goes to many other households.

The figures also don’t include investment income.A separate measure tracked by the Labor Department shows the same result: Total labor income, excluding government workers, was 0.6% higher in January than it was a year earlier.

That is “pretty remarkable,” given the sharp drop in employment, said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase.

The figures document that the vanished earnings from 8.9 million Americans who have lost jobs to the pandemic remain less than the combined salaries of new hires and the pay raises that the 150 million Americans who have kept their jobs received.