Low-wage jobs show fastest growth (this is our future:(..)

[SoCalDem]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2010/09/low-wage-jobs-show-fastest-growth-report-says.html

September 1, 2010

The job growth the nation has experienced this year has been concentrated in low- and mid-wage industries, indicating that robust consumer spending may still be a long way off, even if employers start adding jobs. That’s according to a report out Wednesday from the National Employment Law Project, which used two data sets from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to look into the wages of growth industries.

snip

About 35% of the jobs lost in 2008 and 2009 were in industries that pay between $8.92 and $15 an hour, the bottom two-fifths of the wage scale, the report says. But those jobs accounted for 76% of net growth in 2010. The low-wage industries include retail, food services and drinking places, nursing and residential care facilities, and administrative and waste services. Some growth also occurred in mid-wage industries such as manufacturing, wholesale trade, and hospitals and ambulatory healthcare services.

Industries that pay between $17.43 and $31.02 an hour, the top two-fifths of the wage scale, contributed only 5% of net job growth in 2010, after accounting for 48% of losses in 2008 and 2009. The top five occupations in industries with net growth between 2008 and 2009 were retail salespersons; cashiers; combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food, waiters and waitresses; and registered nurses. Those industries have median hourly wages of $9.92, $8.73, $8.43, $8.69 and $31.41, respectively.

snip

This “challenges workers’ ability to support their families, but also the broader economic goal of restoring robust consumer demand.”

-- Alana Semuels

[DJ13]

1. When everyone has a low wage job who will buy their high priced products?

[TheMuse]

2. Maybe they are hoping that China and India

Will pick up the purchasing slack after we are all low income wage slaves?

Or, more likely, their focus on short-term profits, earnings per share, and meeting market expectations for the quarter will catch up to them. Which also will unfortunately cause more layoffs, less jobs, lower pay, etc. etc.

Not a rosy picture, eh?

[DJ13]

4. Not rosy at all

We really need to divorce executive pay and bonuses from stock valuations before the shortsightedness destroys whats left of our economy.

[SoCalDem]

6. and we need to break up the conglomerates

basically, we need to re-do what used to work.. smaller businesses....pensions for long-timers and less emphasis on CasinoWallStreet.

as long as we are over-consumers, doing stuff for each other (and making little in the way of manufactured products), we are doomed to bubble after bubble.

service economies cannot sustain us for the long-haul.

we don't NEED to eat at restaurants
we don't NEED to have our nails done, hair cut, our dogs professionally washed & trimmed, our car oil changed by others.

Services are luxuries that we are willing to pay OTHERS to do for us, but when we cannot afford to have these things, done, THOSE jobs also go away:(

[closeupready]

8. They'll scream for a taxpayer-financed bailout, letcuring about "sanctity of the contract."

n/t

[Donnachaidh]

3. Shock Doctrine -- American Style

I guess THESE are the jobs that are being touted as *creations* of the stimulus? Yeah -- I'm sooooo proud my government is helping THIS sort of nonsense go on in this country.

NOT.

CHANGE we can *believe* in?

NOT.

:grr:

[electricD]

5. no duh!!!

they're is always a fastfood restaurant needing burger flippers and fry men.

[anarch]

7. let's see: wage suppression, no manufacturing base, credit freezing up

no real jobs to speak of, anyway.

I'm finding it hard to have a real cheerful outlook on things.

[billlll]

9. GOAL entire world dollar a day wage

One billionaire atop them.

Do-able GOP goal??

[billlll]

10. WHOOPS DUP

One