via AlterNet:
Posted by meteorblades at 7:58 am
September 1, 20105
Study: Job Growth Is Limited to Really Crappy JobsPosted by meteorblades on @ 7:58 am
This post originally appeared on the Daily Kos.The recession may have magnified a trend that began nearly four decades ago – wage stagnation, or worse. Michael Luo at The New York Times writes,For Many, a New Job Means Lower Wages, Studies Find:
With the country focused on job growth and unemployment continuing to hover above 9 percent, there has been comparatively little attention paid to the quality of the jobs being created in this still-struggling economy and what that might say about the opportunities that will be available to workers when the tumult of the Great Recession finally settles. …
For years, long before the recession began, job growth had become increasingly polarized in this country, with high-paid occupations that demand significant amounts of education and training growing rapidly, alongside low-wage, entry-level, service-type jobs that do not require much schooling or special skills, according to David Autor, a labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The growth of these low-wage jobs began in the 1980s, accelerated in the 1990s and began to really take off in the 2000s. Losing out in the shuffle, according to Dr. Autor, are jobs that he describes as “middle-skill, middle-wage” — entry-level white-collar positions, like office and administrative support work, as well as certain blue-collar jobs, like assembly line workers and machine operators.
But now there’s an additional element at work. A recent study by the National Employment Law Project points out that “net job growth in 2010 has not been distributed evenly across the economy. Growth has been concentrated in mid-wage and lower-wage industries. By contrast, higher-wage industries showed weak growth and even net losses.” .........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/09/01/study-job-growth-is-limited-to-really-crappy-jobs/