As the jobs finally start to appear, a dearth of high-paying positions is dividing our society, politics and middle class
As the jobs finally start to appear, a dearth of high-paying positions is dividing our society, politics and middle class
Between now and November, middle class Americans are going to hear an enormous amount of bragging about job creation.
Mitt Romney will tout his role in the creation of Staples, The Sports Authority and Domino’s, three firms that he says created 100,000 jobs. Barack Obama will say 2.9 million jobs have been created since March 2010, and highlight a surge of 140,000 new private sector jobs in November.
The central question for middle class Americans, however, is: What quality of job is being created? The November job surge, for example, occurred primarily in retail, leisure and hospitality, sectors known for low wages. The other high-growth areas were professional services and health care, where higher education is a central determinant of income. Manufacturing and construction, one of the few areas left in the American economy where members of the middle class without elite educational pedigrees can find strong wages, were moribund. The following chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks down the numbers.
In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, Republicans and Democrats both recognize the problem. After years of Democratic politicians complaining about a lack of social mobility for Americans, The New York Times reported this morning that Republican candidates are complaining about the problem as well.
Presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America,” according to The Times. Wisconsin Congressman Paul D. Ryan, a leading House conservative, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”
The story reported that at least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A Swedish research project found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. In Denmark, the number was 25 percent. In Britain, it was 30 percent. At the same time, only 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.
A Canadian study found that just 16 percent of Canadian men raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared with 22 percent of Americans, The Times reported. Similarly, 26 percent of American men raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of Canadians.
Economists argue that a central tool in reviving the middle class - and creating social mobility - is the creation of better-paying middle class jobs. Like so much else, that task is enormously complex. Scholars say the reduction in pay is the product of worldwide economic trends, from technological change to globalization, that are difficult to counter. Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University, tracked which parts of the economy featured high paying jobs over time. The percentage of well-paying jobs provided by the manufacturing sector fell by half - from roughly 27 percent in 1992 to 13.5 percent in 2003.