Fox News quoted different data...that according to the IRS, the top American salaries were up 10-22%. There were several articles using those figures last week. If I can find the story I'll post it.
WASHINGTON - One in five Americans laid off from a long-term job in the last three years was still unemployed in January, and most who had found jobs were paid less than they were before, government data showed Friday.
In a report that adds fuel to the debate over the quality of new jobs, the Labor Department said only 65 percent of the 5.3 million workers who were laid off from January 2001 to December 2003 were re-employed by January 2004.
Another 15 percent had left the labor force and were not counted as unemployed.
Of those who lost full-time wage and salary jobs and found new ones, 57 percent earned less than they had in the positions they lost, the worst result in 10 years.
"About one-third experienced earnings losses of 20 percent or more," the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said in the report.
Recent employment growth has buoyed the economic record of President Bush, but Democratic presidential contender John Kerry has argued that the new jobs now appearing are inferior, a claim Treasury Secretary John Snow disputed Friday.
"In fact, what the evidence shows is that we are creating jobs across the board," Snow told WDAY radio in Fargo, N.D. "There is no evidence that these are the so-called low-paying jobs, the hamburger-flipper jobs, that demean American workers."
Economists are divided on the issue because of disagreements over which data best measure job quality. But Jared Bernstein, senior economist with the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the new report showed how painful the recent slump has been.
"We focus a lot, as we should, on the benefits of a more global economy and the greater exposure to free trade," Bernstein said. "But we probably focus too little on the costs, and this report provides a window to what this creative destruction actually looks like at the level of working families."
The Labor Department report, conducted as part of a monthly poll of households about employment, focused on "long-tenured" employees, the 5.3 million displaced workers who had held their jobs for at least three years.
And 6.1 million Americans were laid off from jobs they had held for less than three years.
The report may stir up the controversy over the shift of jobs to low-wage countries because it said 43 percent of workers cited plant or company closings or moves as the reason they were out of work. The report did not indicate whether the work had moved overseas or elsewhere in the United States.
"Nearly one-third of long-tenured displaced workers lost jobs in manufacturing," the report said, a stark measure of how much pain the factory sector suffered in the 2001 recession and the slow recovery.
The re-employment rate for laid-off manufacturing workers was 60 percent, five percentage points below the overall success rate.
Factory workers were also paid less in their new jobs, with 64 percent reporting lower earnings.