the unemployment rate is meaningless - sure, people are working, they are moving from $70K/yr tech jobs to working at Lowes.
Please produce the evidence of the prole drift of the lower middle class in the US. That's your point isn't it, to wit, folks have moved from designing websites or something to flipping hamburgers? BS.
This is just pain not true.
The average wage in recently-created jobs was slightly higher than the wage in all existing jobs, according to the Labor Department. The only way for this to be true is either:
1. People are not, on average, going down in wage, or
2. New jobs are all very close to the mean and previously lost high-paying positions are not being filled.
The number new jobs is high enough so that I believe the distribution is the same as existing jobs.
Then why don't they update their skills a little bit and go for an IT auditor job?
I read an article in ComputerWorld two weeks ago that there was a serious shortage of IT auditors, and with the outsourcing going on, most companies were beefing up their IT security staffs.
It's like what happened with buggy whip makers when cars started being built. I'm sure they were freaking out - only to find later that the economy had merely undergone a transition.
Wake up, the IT slump is over, the only people working at Lowes who were making 70k 3 years ago are the folks who's only skill was they knew was HTML, or people in middle management whos only skill was kissing ass, and the market was insane that companies were vastly overpaying people.
Folks who truly have skills and talent are finding pleanty of jobs! Particularly in last few months! I live in an area of the country where IT was absolutely DEAD for the last few years, but its definately come back in the last few months... and if its coming back here, it has to be absolutely booming elsewhere.
Don't buy into that Democratic spin line.