.
More than a third of job gains since recovery are in fields that pay under $13.34/hr.:restaurants and bars, temporary staffing, and
retail. 7 million more jobs are still needed to keep up with population growth. 1.49 million construction jobs are still missing, 1.65 million fewer factory workers. "The traditional labor market is no
longer relevant." Wells Fargo Chief economist Silvia. Median HH income has dropped $3300. 2.5 million more now work part time, 2.9 million fewer work full time.
6/7/14, "US job market recovers losses yet appears weaker," by Josh Boak and Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics Writers
"The U.S. economy has finally regained the jobs lost to the Great
Recession. But go easy on the hallelujahs. The comeback is far
from complete.
Friday's
report from the government revealed an economy healing yet marked by
deep and lasting scars. The downturn that began 6½ years ago accelerated
wrenching changes that have left many Americans feeling worse off than
they did the last time the economy had roughly the same number of jobs
it does now....
To
many economists, the job figures are both proof of the sustained
recovery and evidence of a painful transformation in how Americans earn
a living.
"The labor market recovery has been disappointing," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services. "Even with the new peak, there is still a great deal of slack."
There
are still 1.49 million construction jobs missing. Factories have 1.65
million fewer workers.
Many of these jobs have been permanently replaced
by new technologies: robots, software and advanced equipment that
speeds productivity and requires less manpower, said Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research for the advisory and consulting firm CohnReznick.
"When
heavy things need to be moved, we now have machines to do it," O'Keefe
said. "It is unlikely in the manufacturing sector that we recover much
of the losses."
Government payrolls have shrunk, taking middle class pay with them. Local school districts have 255,400 fewer employees. The U.S. Postal Service has shed 194,700 employees.
And
during the economic recovery, more people have left the job market than
entered it. Just 58.9 percent of working-age Americans have jobs, down
from 62.7 percent at the start of the recession.
Some
of that decline comes from an aging country in which more people are
retiring. But the share of working adults among the overall population
is "still bouncing around at the bottom where it was during the worst of
the recession" — evidence that meaningful wage gains across the economy
are unlikely, O'Keefe said.
The recovery hasn't kept up with the expanding U.S. population. Researchers at the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimate that 7 million more jobs would have been needed to keep up with population growth.
The pain has been concentrated largely among lower- and middle-income workers, according to an analysis by the institute.
For
the bottom 30 percent of earners, wages, when adjusted for inflation,
have fallen over the past 14 years. For the next 40 percent of earners,
pay basically flatlined.
Most U.S. workers are "running up the down escalator," said Larry Mishel, the institute's president. Median
household income is $52,959, which, after inflation, is $3,303 below
its pre-recession level, according to Sentier Research.
Three
generally low-paying industries account for more than one-third of the
job gains in the recovery: restaurants and bars; temporary staffing; and
retail, according to research by the National Employment Law Project.
Pay in these sectors averages under $13.34 an hour.
Mike
Evangelist, a policy analyst at NELP, said the nation's evolution away
from goods production to a more service-oriented economy has slowed
hiring in many mid- and higher-paying sectors. The weak job gains in
those sectors have slowed overall pay growth, giving consumers less
money to spend and depriving the recovery of its usual vigor.
Relative
to much of Europe and Japan, lower-wage jobs have accounted for much of
the job growth in the United States. About a quarter of U.S. jobs were
in low-paying industries in 2011, according to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, a 34-nation association based in
Paris.
That was the highest proportion among developed nations, the OECD said. In 2001, the United States had ranked fifth in low-paying jobs.
Employers have been shifting to more part-time workers, noted John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo.
"We've
got a different labor market with a stronger emphasis on part-time
jobs," Silvia said. "The traditional labor market is no
longer relevant."
More
than 27.2 million Americans now work part time,
about 2.5 million more
than before the recession.
Roughly a quarter of those workers would
prefer to be full time, according to the May jobs report.
And while the
number of full-time workers has risen during the 5-year-old recovery,
the economy still has 2.9 million fewer of them....
Employers
added 217,000 workers in May, more than enough to surpass the 138.4
million jobs that existed when the recession began in December 2007. But
even as the unemployment rate has slipped to 6.3 percent from 10
percent at the depth of the recession, the economy still lacks its
former firepower....
Auto
sales last month suggest that consumer spending is shifting into higher
gear. Vehicles were purchased at an annual rate of 16.7 million in May,
a 7 percent improvement from the 2013 average....In this recovery, the lesson appears to be that every little bit counts."...
Image: "In this June 6, 2014 photo, cook Kim Jarjabka send out two lunch orders
at Coppertop restaurant in Valley City, Ohio. According to research by
the National Employment Law Project, restaurants and bars, temporary
staffing, and retail account for more than one-third of the job gains in
the current recovery. Wages in these sectors average less than $13.34
an hour.
Photo: Mark Duncan, AP"
.
===========================
"Fundamental transformation" promised by Obama in 2008. "Painful transformation" delivered in 2014. Couldn't have been done without GOP "leadership."
In Missouri 5 days before Nov. 2008 election Obama says, "We are 5 days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." Kids cheer.
------------------------------
.
6/6/14, "Economy recovers all jobs lost in Great Recession; don't celebrate yet," LA Times, by Jim Puzzanghera
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment