U.S. workers have endured "a decade of flat wages," study says

More than 1,500 people stood in line at the carpenters union in New York City just for a chance to land an apprenticeship. Some of the applicants were in line a week for jobs that start at $45 an hour.

"You're not going to be a doctor or a scientist; you can't beat this blue-collar job," said one job-seeker named James. "You know, this is a great job, and that's why there's lots and lots of people here because, you know, they just don't hand out jobs like this every day."

A majority of U.S. workers have experienced a decade of flat wages, according to new research by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. It found the median weekly wage last year was $768. That's the same as 12 years earlier when adjusted for inflation. Over that same period, wages fell for 70 percent of workers.

Economists place much of the blame on a labor market that hasn't recovered from the Great Recession. "I've had friends that went to four years of college, did four years of college, and graduated and waited years to even get a job," Craig Carr said. Read more >>

Lowest-Paying, Most Dangerous Jobs

Taxi drivers and roofers are two of the most dangerous jobs--and they aren't rewarded for it. Here we look at the top ten lowest-paying, most dangerous jobs in the U.S.

10. Structural Iron & Steel Workers

Dead-end-job score: 17.2

Annual fatality rate per 100,000: 26.9

Median annual wages: $46,140


9. Driver/Sales Workers & Truck Drivers

Dead-end-job score: 14.4

Annual fatality rate per 100,000: 24.0

Median annual wages: $34,550


8. Grounds Maintenance Workers

Dead-end-job score: 14.3

Annual fatality rate per 100,000: 16.8

Median annual wages: $23,970

7. Taxi Drivers & Chauffeurs

Dead-end-job score: 11.6

Annual fatality rate per 100,000: 19.7

Median annual wages: $22,820

6. Roofers

Dead-end-job score: 11.1

Annual fatality rate per 100,000: 31.8

Median annual wages: $35,290

Read more >>

Wages Stink at America's Most Common Jobs

Workers in seven of the 10 largest occupations typically earn less than $30,000 a year, according to new data published Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a far cry from the nation's average annual pay of $45,790.

Food prep workers are the third most-common job in the U.S., but have the lowest pay, at a mere $18,720 a year for 2012. Cashiers and waiters are also popular professions, but the average pay at these jobs tallies up to less than $21,000 annually. There are 4.3 million retail sales workers out there, making them the most common job, but the position pays only $25,310 for the year.

Among the 10 most popular professions, only the nation's 2.6 million registered nurses earn a good living, bringing home nearly $68,000 a year on average. Another two of the most common jobs -- secretaries and customer service representatives -- have an average annual wage of about $33,000. Read more >>

The fastest growing job in America pays almost nothing in wages

Meet home health care aides. These nearly 2 million (mostly minorities and women) workers do everything from prepare meals and clean homes, to bathe and change bedpans for elderly and disabled patients.

As Baby Boomers age, this job is expected to explode, growing 70% between 2010 and 2020, according to the Labor Department. That makes it the single fastest growing job in the United States, according to their forecasts.

Call it the silver tsunami. Roughly every eight seconds, a Baby Boomer turns 65. And that has led to surging demand for in-home care.

"This isn't just a surge, a one-time hiring spurt. This is something we will do this year and into the future," said Paul Hogan, chairman of Home Instead Senior Care, which alone plans to hire 45,000 caregivers in North America this year. "It's all driven by the growth in the senior population." 

But even though there are plenty of job opportunities, many of these people make the same wage as teenagers flipping burgers or selling clothes at the mall. The average hourly wage is just $9.70 an hour, according to the Labor Department. Read more >>

Number of working poor families grows as wealth gap widens

The number of U.S. families struggling with poverty despite parents being employed continued to grow in 2011 as more people returned to work but mostly at lower-paying service jobs, an analysis released on Tuesday shows.

More working parents have taken jobs as cashiers, maids, waiters and other low-wage jobs in fast growing sectors that offer fewer hours and benefits, according to The Working Poor
Project, a privately funded effort aimed at improving economic security for low-income families.
The result is 200,000 more such working families - the so-called "working poor" - emerged in 2011 than in 2010, according to the report, based on analysis of the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

About 10.4 million such families - or 47.5 million Americans - now live near poverty, defined as earning less than 200 percent of the official poverty rate, which is $22,811 for a family of four.
Overall, nearly one-third of working families now struggle, up from 31 percent in 2010 and 28 percent in 2007, when the recession began, according to the analysis.

"Although many people are returning to work, they are often taking jobs with lower wages and less job security, compared with the middle-class jobs they held before the economic downturn," the report said. Read more >>

Impact of low-wage work on the economy

In the wake of strikes by Walmart workers last week and fast food workers in New York City this past Thursday, the issue of low-wage work is slowly becoming more prominent. This is a timely, important and essential conversation.

Retail's Hidden Potential, a recent Demos' report about the possibility of lifting 1.5 million retail workers and their families out of poverty, provides hard evidence about the impact of low-wage work on the economy. Now a new study by researchers at Boston College and the University of Massachusetts shows the impact of parents' low-wage jobs on their children.

Analyzing over 100 different data sources, the new study, How Youth Are Put At Risk by Parents' Low-Wage Jobs, estimates that nearly 16 million U.S. families are headed by parents working low-wage jobs and that 1 in 6 adolescents alone live in such households. Read more >>

Low-wage work force grows 30% as the number of jobs shrinks

Low-wage workers in Chicago are better educated, older and rely more on that income these days to meet basic needs than 10 years ago. And there are substantially more of them. That’s according to a new report released by Chicago-based Women Employed and Action Now Institute that shows nearly one in six low-wage workers here last year held a college degree.

The report, authored by Marc Doussard, assistant professor in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, defines low-wage workers as those making $12 an hour or less. The report revealed the share of payroll employees ages 18 to 64 working in low-wage jobs rose from 23.8 percent in 2011 to 31.2 percent last year. That’s a more than a 30 percent rise in the proportion of such workers.

Meanwhile the share of households with a low-wage earner that got all income from low-wage earnings rose from 45.7 percent to 56.7 percent. That’s evidence more people are relying more on those dollars to meet basic needs rather than for disposable income. Read more >>

America’s disappearing jobs

These are America’s disappearing jobs.

1. Postal service workers
 Percent decrease: -26.4 percent
 2010 jobs: 524,200
 Total job loss (2010-2020): -138,600
 Median annual wage: $53,090

2. Sewing machine operators
 Percent decrease: -25.8 percent
 2010 jobs: 163,200
 Total job loss (2010-2020): -42,100
 Median annual wage: $20,600

3. Shoe and leather workers
 Percent decrease: -23.1 percent
 2010 jobs: 13,300
 Total job loss (2010-2020): -3,100
 Median annual wage: $23,980

4. Communications equipment operators
 Percent decrease: -22 percent
 2010 jobs: 164,000
 Total job loss (2010-2020): -36,100
 Median annual wage: $25,570

5. Semiconductor processors
 Percent decrease: -17.9 percent
 2010 jobs: 21,100
 Total job loss (2010-2020): -3,800
 Median annual wage: $33,130

Read more >>

Most jobs added since recession ended pay slave wages

While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low-paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project. The disappearance of midwage, midskill jobs is part of a longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of the workforce, though it has probably been accelerated by government layoffs.

“The overarching message here is we don’t just have a jobs deficit; we have a ‘good jobs’ deficit," said Annette Bernhardt, the report’s author and a policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy group. The report looked at 366 occupations tracked by the Labor Department, and clumped them into three equal groups by wage, with each representing a third of U.S. employment in 2008.

The middle-third — occupations in fields like construction, manufacturing and information with median hourly wages of $13.84 to $21.13 — accounted for 60 percent of job losses from the beginning of 2008 to early 2010. The job market has turned around since then, but those fields have represented only 22 percent of total job growth. Read more >>

Low-paying jobs are here to stay

Stuck in a job with lousy pay? Better get used to it. Some 28% of workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs in 2020, roughly the same percentage as in 2010, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.
The study defines low-paying jobs as those with wages at or below what full-time workers must earn to live above the poverty level for a family of four. In 2011, this was $23,005, or $11.06 an hour.

The economy won't support much growth in jobs with higher salaries, said Rebecca Thiess, policy analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, who crunched government data to come up with these projections.
"Far too many economic pundits take for granted that the economy of the future will demand far greater skills and credentials," she wrote in a recent paper.

While all eyes are on Friday's monthly jobs report to find out how many positions were added in July, a growing number of economists are concerned with the quality of the jobs being created. Lower wage occupations grew by 3.2% over the year ending in the first quarter of 2011, according to the National Employment Law Project. This was fueled mainly by the expansion of retail salespeople, office clerks, cashiers, food prep workers and store clerks, whose median hourly wages ranged from $7.51 to $13.52. Read more >>

1 Out of 4 Employed Americans Make Less Than $10/hour

McDonald's workers on strike, Paris (Photo credit: Tilemahos_E)

Low wage jobs have been a big part of the so-called recovery.  What they also signify is a more troublesome trend that continues to eat away at the middle class in this country.  I’ve noted that the per capita average income for Americans is $25,000 and many seem to be shocked when they hear how low this figure is. 

A recent presentation only reinforces this figure by discussing the number of working Americans in low wage fields.  The problem with having such a large portion of our population in low wage work is that as the cost of living goes up many of these people have a harder time providing for necessities like food, education, and also healthcare. 

Surprising or not, the nation has been seeing a massive divide between the working class and those at the top.  The low wage employment growth signifies a continuation of this trend. More...