Posted on 09/06/2012 4:16:43 AM PDT by tobyhill
There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the "hollowing out" of the American middle class.
A new study by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) confirms the troubling trend.
NELP broke down jobs into low/ middle/and high-wage groups based on median incomes. Looking at the period from early 2008 through the first quarter of 2012, the study found: "High-wage" occupations accounted for 19% of the jobs lost during the Great Recession and 20% of the jobs gained during the recovery. "Mid-wage" occupations suffered 60% of job losses during the recession but only 22% of the growth during the recovery. "Low-wage" occupations accounted for 21% of the losses and a whopping 58% of the growth.
In other words, NELP found what many Americans already know: The market for middle class jobs has shrunk and most of the jobs that have been created during the recession are in low-income areas like retail and food services.
"In short, America's good jobs deficit continues," NELP said in a summary of the study. "Policymakers have understandably been focused on the urgent goal of getting U.S. employment back to where it was before the recession…but our findings underscore that job quality is rapidly emerging as a second front in the struggling economy."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
If real estate and rents fell to true third works levels here in the USA then a burger flipper would be middle class. It is all relative to the cost of living.
This is where the Republicans get a black eye. Corporations have a responsibility to the communities within which they operate. This responsibility includes helping the community continue to grow usually by hiring local people, using local suppliers, etc. It also included “Do no Harm” such as not dumping toxic waste into the water and soil, not hiring criminals (illegals), etc. This single issue may be what costs Romney the election. I am all for business success but it cannot be at the cost of our legislative, legal and social systems to enable stockholders to get an extra .10 per share.
btt
Ah, the road to serfdom...the Oligarchs are winning.
Now, I am much older and while I lived through the Reagan Recovery...I didn't actually ‘see’ what was happening in the wider economy at the time. I just knew Reagan was good for me. But now older and wiser, it wasn't the old jobs that ‘made the Reagan Recovery’ so great. Heck, it wasn't even initially those middle-class jobs. It was the entrepreneur's jobs and growing their businesses from their computer basements to silicon valley. The other day driving around in my car with my business's magnetic signs ...I noticed a lot of other cars with similar magnetic signs. Every recovery has had an accompanying advance in some form of technology. In 1982 if you would have said nearly every home would have a home computer, cell phone, or wifi...no one would have believed you.
What is different this time? 0bama and his vision. You see, somewhere in this glut of low paying jobs & tiny start-ups, waiting to breakout...is the next recovery. And that is what 0bama and the democrats don't understand about growing an economy. You can't dictate the American economy, you can't dictate the entrepreneur and we can't live in the past of middle-class jobs. As the 0bama administration continues to try and dictate what the new middle-class jobs should be...it is the inflation that is hollowing out the finances of the middle-class.
The reason that many companies require a degree is because, as I understand it (big qualification here), they cannot administer written tests--read "IQ"--because of the Supreme Court's decision in 1971, "Griggs v. Duke Power." Look it up.
Because they cannot do this, they use a sheepskin as a proxy because it is generally accepted (though, I suspect, not by you) that a college graduate has a certain degree of intelligence.
My wife and I had dinner Labor Day evening at Logan’s Roadhouse, a national chain restaurant.
Our server/waiter was a huge guy, muscled and very tan.
I remarked to him that he didn’t look like a waiter, and asked did he body build.
He said, “No, I’m actually a construction contractor. I had my own business, stucco, roofing, siding, that kind of stuff. I had 10 employees, but now, for the last four years business has gone down to the point that this is all I can do just to pay my bills.”
And these people in their 50s and up (twice my age) in management believe that a degree is equal to intelligence?
LOL!
I’d verbally beat them down into primordial ooze.
Hiring “managers” hire people like themselves. If the hiring manager went to college, the ANYONE he hires will have gone to college so trade school and school of hard knocks or military do not count. A college degree does not require Intelligence, it requires money, time and a little effort.
Borrowing from an old concept, what will America's “New Economy,” be this time?
0bama’s dictated alternative energy economy?
Romney's unleashing of the entrepreneur?
Or neither, but continued languishing because our leaders don't know how to let the recovery happen?
Estimated value of his house - $750k. Cars in his driveway - 2010 Murano & 2009 Avalon. Decidedly middle-class.
If you say so. And I'll bet you don't have one because you're surely not speaking from experience. A couple clues are your deficiency in written English (you don't know that "intelligence" is not a proper noun, it's a common noun and should not be capitalized) and anyone who has been to college knows that it takes a lot of effort.
A little jealousy there, fella?
We administer skill tests. Candidates are placed in a sandbox environment and give them a slate of tasks that are ordinary and customary for the job they have applied for. If they can't perform them, they are rejected regardless of eductional acheivement. I've rejected guys with doctorates because they can't write simple queries. They weren't stupid. They just didn't have the right skillset. Our organization is currently understaffed and we don't have the bandwidth for OJT. We need skilled workers, and I don't care if they are HS grads or college grads.
All I have to say is look at where our politicians go for schooling, and subsequently what they do to the economy.
Jealous at people that go to college? Hardly. I could run this country better.
Besides, I wouldn’t let a girl drown inside a car that had crashed into a little river, unlike one of the Democrat’s heroes.
What is a college degree worth anyway? You think I want to suffer through attempted indoctrination? I’d end up failing because I wouldn’t tow the line. To top it all off, I have an endocrine disease which would make college a waste of money anyway, because my brain can’t absorb things that way.
It’s primary hyperparathyroid disease. A lot of people feel that if it’s something they haven’t heard of, it either doesn’t exist, or the person is making up the symptoms. Look it up, parathyroid.com. I failed most of high school because of it.
To end it, college can’t make me any more intelligent than I already am. I have Free Republic to thank for my level of intelligence and critical thinking. College would say I’m certified in something.
The bottom line is, like it or not, we are now all entrepreneurs, it is getting more difficult to rely on others to give us work, you are going to have to seek out work yourself.
Here's the problem, nowadays Capital is global, it may be Chinese that hold a good portion of equity, there are no borders in the corporate world, there is no national loyalty. That's the nature of the beast.
Care to elaborate? From here on out I’ll be back on at around 6pm EST, because I have to go to my part-time job where I can’t access the internet, because that’s the best I can get right now in this oh-so-wonderful economy (sarcasm, obviously).
I hope you’ll reply. I need to 1), get out of NY, and 2), get something better to improve my personal situation.
That is really amusing. Let me share with you what is hard. Walking up the Hindu Kush mountains with 40 lbs of body armor and 80+lbs of gear in 90 degree temp knowing that any moment you may come under fire. How about being able to orient an artillery piece, load, and compute the trajectory to hit a target 30 or 40 miles away in minutes. How about servicing a military fighter with munitions of several types, repairing aircraft electrical systems. Being able to provide FULL battlefield medical treatment for any type of wounds for a fallen warrior. All of this being done by 18/19 year olds with typically less than a year of training. College is a cake walk. You can take the elitist position and pick on a typo if you wish but that still does not take away from the content of my position.
The only professional jealousy that I’ve personally encountered occurred a few jobs back when a fellow with multiple degrees somehow discovered that I was earning more than he was. Never mind that I was in a different position with a differnet wage scale and significantly greater responsibility. He would not rest until either my wages were cut or his were increased. He eventually succeeded in having salary and retention criteria changed to heavily favor degreed individuals. That policy amounted to a career ceiling and it cost the company a lot of good people.
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