Reply #3: You need to look past David to the troubling trend [View All]

[RamboLiberal]

that the jobs that grow the middle class the wages are stagnant and actually dropping while the cost of everything goes up. During the 90's this wasn't happening. Don't know about the rest of you but I'm sick of hearing the Bushies tout how great the economy is. Like the 80's many workers are under-employed for their skill and education level. More from the article.

Employment recruiter Alan Guarino has seen a similar change in his work. He says about 15% of workers with four-year college degrees are working at "gray-collar" jobs below their skill level, such as in retail, mainly because they cannot find better-paying jobs; before 2001, the figure was about 10%.

"A very significant percentage of the jobs we are creating are contingent jobs," not salaried positions, said Guarino, chief executive of Cornell International, a staffing firm.

Jonathan Hess, 25, took a low-paying job — and then found himself falling further behind.

A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Hess has been working as a clerk at a Borders bookstore in San Francisco. Until recently, he was earning $1,300 a month, living paycheck to paycheck. Then the manager reduced staffers' hours and forced them to use their vacation time to avoid unpaid leave.