The most recent jobs reports indicate that there is growing labor market momentum in a number of middle-wage occupational categories. According to research conducted by JP Morgan Chase, hiring in occupations that require significant skills within manufacturing, sales and construction has risen 2.9 percent since the start of 2013, outpacing overall employment growth.
This marks a respite in a decades long shrinking of middle tier jobs relative to top end and low-wage occupations such as food and retail services. According to Robert Mellman, a senior U.S. economist at JPMorgan, "There’s a hint of an end to job polarization." As reported by Bloomberg, some 974,000 middle income positions have been added this year alone.
Based on years of observed labor market dynamics, many people may have simply begun to presume that the jobs being added by the economy are simply not as good as the ones that already exist. But that has not been the case so far in 2014. The roughly 1.3 million private positions added during the first six months of the current year pay $867 a week on average, exceeding the $843 per week for all 117 million private sector workers in America.
