Finding a job in an economy where there are
3.3 job-seekers for every job is hard enough. Finding a
good job? That's even harder, since 58 percent of the jobs created since the economic recovery began have been low-wage jobs, and
seven out of the 10 most common jobs pay less than $30,000 a year in most cases:
Food prep workers are the third most-common job in the U.S., but have the lowest pay, at a mere $18,720 a year for 2012. Cashiers and waiters are also popular professions, but the average pay at these jobs tallies up to less than $21,000 annually. There are 4.3 million retail sales workers out there, making them the most common job, but the position pays only $25,310 for the year.
Part of the corporate-propelled race to the bottom is that we're constantly told to expect less—if you're a food prep worker making $18,720, at least you're not making minimum wage, amiright? There's this vast campaign to normalize low wages and set them up as the basic standard most of us should expect, the flip side of the increasing wealth of the top one percent. We need to change the reality, and the only way to do that is to fight the mentality that because it's common, it's not wrong. Food prep should pay more. Retail should pay more. And investments in infrastructure and manufacturing should make jobs in construction and transit and clean energy and metal fabrication more common.