Entry-level jobs hard to find, pay less, often offer no insurance, pension

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Many Entry-Level Workers Feel Pinch of Rough Market
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: September 4, 2006

This Labor Day, the 45 million young people in the nation’s work force face a choppy job market in which entry-level wages have often trailed inflation, making it hard for many to cope with high housing costs and rising college debt loads.

Entry-level wages for college and high school graduates fell by more than 4 percent from 2001 to 2005, after factoring in inflation, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute. In addition, the percentage of college graduates receiving health and pension benefits in their entry-level jobs has dropped sharply.

Some labor experts say wage stagnation and the sharp increase in housing costs over the past decade have delayed workers ages 20 to 35 from buying their first homes.

“People are getting married later, they’re having children later, and they’re buying houses later,” said Cecilia E. Rouse, an economist at Princeton University and a co-editor of a forthcoming book on the economics of early adulthood. “There’s been a lengthening of the transition to adulthood, and it is very possible that what has happened in the economy is leading to some of these changes.”

Census Bureau data released last week underlined the difficulties for young workers, showing that median income for families with at least one parent age 25 to 34 fell $3,009 from 2000 to 2005, sliding to $48,405, a 5.9 percent drop, after having jumped 12 percent in the late 1990’s....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/us/04labor.html?hp&ex=1157428800&en=a9ba3ed1ea683919&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. They have been fucking the older workers for a while now.

Now they are gonna start on the young college graduates. Soon, we'll all be fucked.

[Selatius]

2. We are all fucked.

It's just some of us are being promoted to a harder level of fucking.

Pardon my French.

[Digit]

3. This is not just a problem for the younger crowd.

I FINALLY found a job, but the pay is too embarassing to mention.
Let's just say they offered $20,000 and came up a tad. I know from the look on my face you would have thought I had been slapped.

Oh, and I am 55 and living on my own and the commute is not a piece of cake.
Funtimes....funtimes...:sarcasm:

[EFerrari]

4. No, it's problem for all Americans. You're so right.

[salvorhardin]

5. Thanks for posting this

Although it's easy to blame corporations for this, and they certainly deserve a great deal of blame, I think this is also largely a result of technological improvements. The fact of the matter is that improvements in technology have made the individual worker, both in the office and on the factor line, many more times productive than the same worker just two or three decades ago. There ends up being fewer jobs overall, and skills are being instantiated in software requiring fewer skilled workers. For instance, it used to be that if you wanted a nicely done presentation for a meeting you needed a graphic artist to put it together for you. Now the same job can be done by Powerpoint and other software. It may not be as aesthetically pleasing as when the graphic artist did it, but that doesn't matter to businesses. All they know is they need to spend a lot less than they used to on graphic artists. Also, because fewer skills are required to do the same job there is a downward pressure on wages because more people can do the job with the technological assist than before.

Please realize that I'm not saying that corporations don't deserve the blame for a great deal of antisocial behavior. Neither am I staking claim to a Luddite position and saying that we need to do away with some of our technology. What I'm trying to get at though is that I think a lot of what we're seeing in the economy are the growing pains of a technological society. When automation started to come into play in the middle of the twentieth century there was a lot of speculation by futurists that it would lead to a higher standard of living with unimaginable free time. Instead the corporations are reaping unimaginable profits and the standard of living is being nudged downward and we're working longer and harder because now we can (and the corporations are making sure it's for less pay). So somehow we need to figure out a way to get us closer to that futurist vision from the past.

My solution would involve some form of socialist redistribution of wealth, but that's not realistic given our current society (the corporations wouldn't stand for it and the people wouldn't stand up for it).

Anyway... just my half-asleep thoughts early on a September morning.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. A thought-provoking post -- thanks! nt

[Nikia]

7. I regularly see jobs in classified ads and job boards

For jobs requiring a 4 year degree that pay under $12/hour. For the most part, it seems that entry level jobs pay rate have not really increased in the past 6 years.