When economists point to job growth data, a common retort is that while the nation may be adding jobs, it’s not adding many good ones. An recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal analyzed job changes over time in approximately one hundred sub-sectors in order to determine the extent to which the nation has been adding higher paying or lower paying positions.
The data indicate that since two thousand and seven, job growth has tended to largely originate from lower wage segments. For instance, the number of jobs in the food and drinking services industry has expanded by seventeen percent.
Average weekly pay in this industry is less than three hundred and forty dollars. The number of positions in home healthcare services grew by nearly fifty percent since two thousand and seven, but average weekly pay in that segment is only about five hundred and fifty dollars nationally.
The data also indicate that more people work minimum wage jobs or are involuntarily working part time relative to the period preceding the recession – that’s despite the fact that the number of minimum wage and part time workers has declined over the past five years. America is home to about 2.6 million workers earning the minimum wage, up from 1.7 million workers in two thousand and seven.
