Lost in the debate over whether we're better off today is the inexorable widespread decline of job quality. Yes, the American economy is creating jobs, although at an ominously slower pace the past few years, but what kind of jobs?
Call-center jobs, which can be some of the better positions in the vaunted service economy, pay an average of $10.71 an hour.
Yet that's far below the $13.75 needed to keep a family of four above the poverty line. The average Ford factory worker makes $31.64 an hour.
First, this expansion has the
lowest job growth of any expansion in the last 40 years:
But so far, as the charts show, there are just 3.5 percent more job than at the end of the last recession. That is less than half the lowest of the nine previous moves -- a gain of 7.6 percent in the period after the 1953-54 recession. And that figure was held down by the fact that another recession, in 1957-58, had taken place by then.
Here's a chart of total job creation. Remember this expansion started in November 2001, yet job growth did not pick-up steam until a few years afterwards:
The US has lost over 2.8 million manufacturing jobs over the last 6 years:
In addition, the US has lost over 500,000 information service jobs over the last 6 years:
Construction jobs provided the wage equivalent of manufacturing jobs. However, construction employment has leveled off since the first of the year.
Although the economy has increased professional and financial jobs during this expansion, these are not the biggest areas of job growth. Instead, lower paying jobs in leisure and entertainment and medical/education have increased:
This lack of quality job growth is one of the reasons median income for this expansion is stagnant:
Nationally, 2005 marked the first year since 1999 in which real median household income showed an annual increase
Why is this happening?
The rise of global competition certainly took away an edge that American business had enjoyed for two decades after World War II.
Technology and innovation have continued the age-old tension between automation and workers. Illegal immigration has played a role, as well, at least for some workers.
Yet much of the change has come from public policy, whether in more liberal trade agreements that haven't worked as sold, or in deregulation, weakened labor laws and tax cuts that have favored big business and the very wealthy.
Over the next 10 years or so, he US has a difficult choice to make. Do we work at creating better jobs or do we accept the status quo.