The Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) is out with a new report that finds that more and more Americans are in “bad jobs” — that is, jobs that offer weak pay and benefits.
Here are a couple of the report’s findings that are particularly shocking:
– Less Jobs Offer Health Coverage:Ai??The report notes that “46.7 percent of jobs did not haveAi??health insurance in 2010, up from 30.2 percent in 1979.” Here’s a graph from the report illustrating this:
– Less Jobs Offer Retirement Plans: CEPR writes that byAi??”2010, the share of workers not participating in Ai??a retirement plan at work stood at 54.5 percent, up from 48.3 percent in 1979.” Here’s a graph from the report illustrating that statistic:Ai??
The report also finds that overall pay has actually increased for most workers, but only by tiny margins: “In 2010, 52.8 percent of workers were in jobs that paid less than $37,000 per year,Ai??down from 59.4 percent in 1979.”
Cumulatively, these numbers paint a picture of America that is failing to live up to the promise of hard work. It’s important to remember that even as benefits are declining for workers, labor productivity has continued to grow over time. This means that Americans are producing just as much or more, but getting less for it. It’s going to take one heck of a progressive movement to turn this sad situation around.
Well good luck getting it turned around. After 30 years of Republican rule and Democratic acquiescence (meaning some of the things Clinton gave in on and even things that Obama ceded to) the wrongs have been institutionalized. I wrote a paper over 40 years ago that the problem in this country was that it had its priorities all screwed up. But this country’s true religion is $$$$$ and as long as that continues nothing can be done.
Michael, you have a strong point…sadly.
I am one of the 52.8% below $37K; I support 6 other people. If not for the VA, my healthcare status would be “screwed”. My job has a 401(K), that I cannot afford to make contributions into, thus, it’s all THEIR side. Worth about $4K right now, pitiful….
It’s truly a dead-end job, unless I embrace the ethical bankruptcy of mass-market retail, yet there’s nothing else out there that will pay as well.
There is a special place in hell for the GOP at this time….
Welcome to the past. Also our future if we keep going as we are. I was reading something the other day anout the beginnings of the Union movement, and I hope I temember correctly, but the figure that sticks in my mind is that in 1847 the average work week was 61 hours.
Welcome to our future. Do we really have to do it over again to get a living and fair wage? The answer is probably yes if we elect the Republicans.
You can thank illegal immigrants for contributing to the overall decline in wages, why would an employer pay a living wage for a job when there is a line of ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS waiting to work for next to nothing. We also have a government not interested in pursuing these employers or the ILLEGALS that they employ. Wake up people politicians do not care for this country they care about votes and power.
Yes, our economy is in pitiful shape with people working for less and working longer because we must.
However, immigrants are NOT the problem. Immigrants generally are NOT taking the jobs from Americans; corporations are choosing them because, yes, they work for less and demand less and, therefore, corporations make more profits. If Americans accept these jobs, they work for just about the same lack of benefits and wages because corporations are in control.
Let us turn our attention now to dealing with this recession, which, by the way, was ENGINEERED through corporate practices and government policies. By steadily deregulating industries through the Eighties, Nineties and this century, corporations were permitted to widen resource distribution between owners-employers and workers in America. To keep surviving on less purchasing power versus greater inflation, workers either had to continuously borrow money or settle for a less abundant lifestyle than previous workers. In their greed, corporations downsized as much as possible and/or moved operations abroad where they could exploit workers even more than they could in America. Such practices created and are still creating the unemployment/underemployment pool that keeps the current recession going. These workers who are also the customers no longer have enough income to consume the offerings of American industries that used to drive the growth of those industries.
It isn’t as if American productivity has decreased. Americans work significantly more hours, whether they are at the top of the corporate ladder or on the bottom rung than counterparts in other industrialized nations. On average owing to employers’ constant pressures to do more on less time with fewer hands, Americans work 100 more hours each year than colleagues in Britain and nearly 400 more hours than those in Germany for less individual benefits. Each year for five decades and including this year, American productivity (output per hour worked) has increasingly outdistanced every other workforce in the world. However, when compared with other nations’ workers. benefits to the American workforce have lessened every year until we currently languish at the very bottom of the industrialized First World. How just is this?
To reverse the recession, government must stimulate careers for the unemployed and underemployed. Here are suggestions:
1) Send people back to school for education/training/retraining
Anyone lacking a high school diploma or G.E.D. equivalent, whatever age she/he may be, if they are unemployed/underemployed, must return to high school until graduation.
Any unemployed/underemployed high school graduate, at whatever age, must be sent to a technical school or enrolled in a college degree program or placed in an apprenticeship for career training, preferencing those for innovative and clean energy technologies.
Any unemployed/underemployed individual whose job skills have become obsolete must be sent for retraining in technical school or college degree program or an apprenticeship.
Education will empower these people to obtain skills necessary to function in available and new positions.
2. Limit the size to which any enterprise is allowed to develop. This must include all genres of industry and service:
Turn over the management, production, and revenues of all American-owned plants, branches, and business operations site in foreign countries to the locals who work there. If a business is American-owned and operated, then it needs to be located in one of the fifty states and not abroad and to employ people who live in the United States. Corporate globalization is just another strategy of bullying the world.
Restrict the operation of any business to one state only. If a business has facilities in several states (for example, Lowe’s or Walmart or fast food franchises), these should be broken into autonomous units separate to each state (Lowe’s of Maine, Lowe’s of Alabama, Lowe’s of Wisconsin, et al.) — with local ownership and management of each state entity and separate legal status. Owners/employers must be required to reside in the state where the business is sited.
Make it illegal for any company to merge with or buy out any other company to prevent the growth of cartels and umbrella companies. Make it so that one owner/employer can legally operate only one company.
This will permit small enterprises to exist and to flourish in local communities and will redistribute business assets and management opportunities. In turn, these smaller enterprises will employ more people because there will be more business operations. Through the intimacy of smaller units, better relationships will be encouraged among owner/employers and workers, resulting in more equity.
Reduce “full-time” to 30 hours per week and raise the minimum wage to $10.00 per hour. This should cause employers to hire more workers rather than pay for overtime hours. Require businesses to provide equal fringe benefits to “part-time” workers as they provide to “full-time” workers. (Paid holidays and sick days, vacations, insurance, family leave). This would insure more people are hired for “full-time” positions.
Control inflation by freezing prices for commodities and services to 10% above each business’s overhead for its commodities or services AND by freezing wages to a scale from minimum for new hires to gradual increases per years of employment in each business.
Create more public service positions by funding libraries, museums, social service agencies, other public institutions.
Increase funding to the arts, artists, scientific research, cultural institutions and activities.
Hire workers at all government levels to repair infrastructure, such as bridges, deteriorating buildings, roads and national monuments — a kind of permanent CCC for construction and maintenance.
The rights of workers in all industries, companies and services to organize unions must be federally recognized and guaranteed and ENFORCED. The recent disgraceful attacks on unions perpetrated at state levels by corporately corrupted governors and legislators is unconscionable and ought to be unconstitutional. Without unions, workers have no way to redress grievances or abuses from employers and any proof of such abuse must elicit sufficient negative consequences.
Promoting justice for workers inside America is only one side of the coin. All these bilateral trade agreements that the United States has negotiated with other countries, particularly in Latin America and Asia, which ultimately work to impoverish the workers in those countries further, need to be cancelled. Microfinancing which is being done by certain non-profits like the Grameen Trust and financial entities creates better opportunities for people in Third World countries to escape from poverty. Women, particularly, seem to benefit from running small businesses and shops in these nations and women, particularly, invest their profits in the welfare of their families.
Situations do arise in families where someone must forego work to care for family members. Whether this person is male or female, she/he should receive a monthly stipend from the government both to supplement income brought in by other members and to acknowledge the value of the care being provided.
The next inequity in the workplace which needs correction is that between the salaries of women and men. It is blatantly and simply wrong that women earn $.77 for every $1.00 men earn in the same job. I fully support the Paycheck Fairness Act. Gender equity has got to become a must. We constitute more than half the population and it is way past time to demolish patriarchy. A true democracy cannot also be a patriarchy.