Two Jobs Not Enough

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:



Two Jobs Not Enough
by Jonathan Tasini

Tuesday 01 of December, 2009


This is the truth about the economy--not the truth embodied in the "green shoots" that various people are trying to look for. The truth of the real lives of real people: two jobs just doesn't make enough work to survive. Actually, it's plenty of work--way more work--than a single individual should have to do. But, the paychecks from the two jobs just are not enough. Tell me your story.

We've heard about this before but today The Wall Street Journal reports:

For Richard Crane, the "new normal" in the labor market began when he was laid off from a New Jersey battery plant in the summer of 2006.

Mr. Crane had been earning more than $100,000 a year operating heavy machinery at Delco, a former unit of General Motors. He worked there for 23 years, since graduating from high school. But when he lost his job he was thrust into a netherworld of part-time gigs: working the registers at Taco Bell, organizing orders at McDonald's, whatever he could find.

"I thought it would be temporary," says Mr. Crane, 49 years old. Three years later, he is selling outdoor furniture by day and pumping gas by night, while worrying about his skills atrophying and spending scant time with his teenage son. He makes about a third of his former pay.

Mr. Crane is part of a growing group of underemployed -- people in part-time jobs who want full-time work or people in jobs that don't employ their skills. Since the recession began two years ago, the number of people involuntarily working part-time jobs has more than doubled to 9.3 million, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest number on record.

The proliferation of underemployed could represent a profound reordering of the employment structure. Many people who had comfortable full-time jobs with benefits and advancement opportunities now are cobbling together smaller jobs often at lower pay, in a shift that economists say could become permanent for many individuals stuck in the cycle. Underemployment, along with unemployment, is widely seen as a force slowing the economic recovery.(emphasis added)

And the article gives some more light to a point that I and others have been making for sometime--the depth of economic despair is often obscured by some of the statistics the media and politicians use:

State labor officials and economists generally label the underemployed as those who are working part-time when they would prefer full-time work, as well as people who are working beneath their skill level.

Federal figures on the underemployed, however, don't count that second group -- those who are overqualified for their jobs. Still, the government's broadest measure of labor underutilization -- known as the U6 -- has more than doubled in the two years since the recession began to 17.5%, and it is up from 12% just a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This means that nearly one in five people are either unemployed, involuntarily working part-time or "marginally attached" -- they want jobs but haven't searched in at least a month. It also counts "discouraged workers" who have stopped searching.

And that does not even take into account the millions of people who work for the minimum wage--which is a poverty-level wage.

You wonder why one in four children need food stamps to survive? We shouldn't be surprised.

There is not a serious debate underway in this country about the depth of economic despair. Many in our political leadership are obsessed with deficits, or are too timid to demand a massive rescue and rebuilding plan for America.

Wake up.


http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=14607

[endless october]

1. bring back manufacturing.

or lose a lot of the middle class. that's basically the choice.

if it takes serious tariffs to bring back the jobs, then serious tariffs it is.

[smokey nj]

2. K&R

[Tansy_Gold]

3. Is there any measurement that takes into consideration the

drop in income?

In the example above, you have one person working two jobs making 1/3 what he used to. So one person drops off the "unemployment" rolls, but what happened to the other $67,000 in income?

Never mind, don't answer that. It went to the stockholders, the hedge fund managers, the bank CEOs.



Tansy Gold, who isn't stupid but is getting angrier by the second

[Echo In Light]

4. Uniquely American

[Subdivisions]

5. We're being reduced to sweat shop level poverty. n/t

[jtrockville]

6. Not all of us are. Wealth of the "have-mores" is increasing rapidly.

[Subdivisions]

7. At the top of every slave-wage society sits the "have-mores". n/t

[aikoaiko]

8. Woah. He used to make 100k operating heavy machinery?

My HS guidance counselor gave me really bad advice.

[SheilaT]

9. My main thought here is that

too many people save absolutely nothing and spend more than they earn, and so they have no cushion, no safety net, and all too easily lose everything.

Because of a divorce I have found myself required to live on about a third of what I used to have available to me. I often wish I had the old income back, but I've rediscovered the joys of getting books from the library instead of buying all my books. Almost never eating at a restaurant and cooking all of my own meals and packing a lunch for work. Going to the local museums on Sunday when they are free to residents of my state. Buying a bottle of wine and sharing it with friends instead of going to a bar.

I don't want to sound sanctimonious, and I agree that there's a lot wrong with things in our country right now. But first of all, manufacturing is NEVER going to come back to this country. We do need an ethical environment that does not allow the kind of wage disparities that currently exist between ordinary workers and those at the top. We absolutely must have a true universal health care system. Public schools need to be funded much better than they are now. And all that's just a start.