The employment report continues to provide deceptive bread and circus fodder for the mainstream press. Never is any thorough analysis given to the 93 million Americans that are now part of the ‘not in the labor force’ category. In large part, we have a low unemployment rate because this massive army of Americans is simply not counted in the employment report. Then, if you dig deeper into the report you realize that a wide spectrum of Americans are now part of the low wage economy. The ‘recovery’ in terms of jobs can be summed up as follows: tons of low paying work, a shrinking of middle class jobs, and few jobs at the top. It is a crony salad bowl of financial incentives to the banking sector while turning a large portion of the country into modern day debt serfs. You need debt to keep up. Good debt (i.e., mortgages) is now tougher to get since banks have crowded out regular families in buying homes. Junk debt (i.e., auto loans) is easy to get and you can simply drive down to your local car dealer and drive away with a new car. With that said, the US has a massive number of workers employed in what are known as low wage jobs. The number is surprising when compared to other nations.
The low wage revolution
There is more to your pay than your hourly rate. Many people have faced the multi-faceted attack on their living standards via:
-stagnant wages
-rising healthcare costs shifted to workers
-the destruction of pensions
This post was published at MyBudget360 on May 16, 2015.
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