Posted on 09/17/2004 5:42:11 AM PDT by OESY
Several months of growth have blown away most of the Chicken Little stories about a "jobless recovery," but one doubt has lingered. Many Americans believe that service-sector "offshoring" means that the number of high-paying jobs is flat, while companies are creating more menial positions.
...A new paper ... analyzes government employment numbers and finds that growth in jobs paying more than the mean now outstrips the creation of jobs on the bottom end of the bell curve. Moreover, the timing of this shift is in line with the pattern of past economic expansions.
...Partisans can generalize the data to get the answer they're looking for. For instance, when the Chicago Fed looked only at the 14 "supersectors" of the economy, 72% of the employment growth in the first half of the year was found in those areas with above-average wages, even though these account for only 65% of total employment. But when the Fed economists separated these into subsectors, only 41% of the growth was in job categories paying more than the mean.
...[T]he trend line is clear: The U.S. employment market is now in positive territory, creating more higher paying jobs. Moreover, it is entirely normal for this to happen a couple years after the end of a recession, as it did following the previous four recessions....
...John Kerry is now arguing that the job market has squeezed the middle class. Others fret that the American consumer has kept the economy going by taking on inordinate debt. But again, there is no evidence to support these claims.... "Spending has been resilient due to job growth, the [5.4%] unemployment rate, income growth and high levels of household savings and net worth." ...[H]ousehold net worth hit another new high in the second quarter, while debt growth has begun to slow....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
So much for the DNC's new class warfare ad I saw on TV last night. Losers!
Higher education = Higher wage jobs
I recommend a "Protectionist Suicide Warning" be added to the title. Some of our FRiends' heads will explode if they read threads like this one.
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