It’s a thought provoking essay putting the so called ‘end of the recession’ and ‘employment upturn’ into their proper light.
When it comes to jobs, it’s not just quantity that matters–it’s also quality. It’s great news that the economy isfinally producing jobs again–even if it’ll take another few years of this kind of growth to get us back to where we were before the Great Recession. But that also means it’s now time to ask what kind of jobs are being created. And on that front, things are a lot less encouraging. Several recent studies suggest that the new jobs pay less and offer fewer work hours than the ones they have replaced. Let’s look at the numbers:
• Lower-wage industries — things like retail and food preparation — accounted for 23 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, but 49 percent of the jobs gained over the last year, a recent study (pdf) by the National Employment Law Program found. Higher-wage industries, by contrast, accounted for 40 percent of the jobs lost, but just 14 percent of the jobs gained. In other words, low paying jobs are increasing as a percentage of total jobs, while high-paying jobs are on the decline.
• Meanwhile, the percentage of those working who have part-time jobs and want full-time ones surged in mid-February to 19.6 percent — almost as high as it was a year ago before the recovery began, according toGallup numbers. That suggests, of course, that a large number of the new jobs created over the last year are part-time.
• And a recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that even though productivity rose 5.2 percent from mid 2009 to the end of 2010, wages increased by just 0.3 percent. That means only 6 percent of productivity gains were shared with workers. In past recoveries, that figure has averaged 58 percent. This time around, far more of the gains went to shareholders, in the form of profits, which are at record levels.
So more people may be at work but they’re making a lot less. But business profits are exceedingly high. You do the math. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and God’s judgment is looming larger on the horizon of our greed driven wasteland of ethics and morality.
