Nearly 75% of new jobs created over the next decade will pay a median wage of less than $35k a year

[YoungDemCA]

Most people are surprised when I tell them that only about 30% of Americans over the age of 25 have bachelor’s degrees. This is especially true of professional middle-class folks who went to high schools where almost everybody went to college immediately after graduation and whose friends now are almost all college graduates. But it’s also true of people from working-class and poor backgrounds, who seem to think they are “abnormal” or “below average” because they haven’t graduated from college. They’re not. They are, in fact, the ones who are “typical.”

It’s even more surprising, however, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that in 2010 only 20% of jobs required a bachelor’s degree, whereas 26% of jobs did not even require a high school diploma, and another 43% required only a high school diploma or equivalent. And according to the BLS, this isn’t going to change much by 2020, since the overwhelming majority of jobs by then will still require only a high school diploma or less. What’s more, nearly 3/4ths of “job openings due to growth and replacement needs” over the next 10 years will pay a median wage of less than $35,000 a year, with nearly 30% paying a median of about $20,000 a year (in 2010 dollars).

Even if we expand the definition to include jobs requiring any education beyond high school, the “knowledge economy” – now and a decade from now –will still represent less than one-third of all available jobs. This is a lot of jobs, about 44 million now, and if you work and live in this one-third, especially in its upper reaches, more education can seem like the answer to everything. Indeed, according to the BLS, having a bachelor’s degree should yield a person nearly $30,000 a year more in wages than a high school graduate.

But most of the American economy is not like this. The BLS’s three largest occupational categories by themselves accounted for more than one-third of the workforce in 2010 (49 million jobs), and they will make an outsized contribution to the new jobs projected for 2020. They are:

Office and administrative support occupations (median wage of $30,710)
Sales and related occupations ($24,370)
Food preparation and serving occupations ($18,770)

Other occupations projected to provide the largest number of new jobs in the next decade include child care workers ($19,300), personal care aides ($19,640), home health aides ($20,560), janitors and cleaners ($22,210), teacher assistants ($23,220), non-construction laborers ($23,460), security guards ($23,920), and construction laborers ($29,280).

If we were serious about eliminating poverty or restoring the credibility of the American Dream or simply respecting lifetimes of hard work, we would be debating how to raise wages directly – how to make it easier for workers to organize themselves into unions, how to get the federal minimum wage higher and on a steady inflation-adjusted escalator, whether to require some kind of workers council for all employers, and then legally require that the benefits of productivity growth be shared with workers. We’d also be discussing how to use a more steeply progressive system of taxation to build a social wage that makes the basics of life – food, housing, mass transit, child care, education, and health care – cheaper for everyone, but most crucially for lower wage workers.

https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/education-jobs-and-wages/

Really sobering, when you think about it - especially in light of how much the American welfare state has been ravaged in the past few decades by global economic trends and political choices, and how stingy our society is when it comes to taking care of the working classes and the poorest among us.

[oldandhappy]

1. I wonder when the real estate and auto industries

will get involved in the minimum wage/student debt fights.

[YoungDemCA]

2. Who knows.

[louis c]

3. kick

[jeff47]

8. Never.

Yes, they'd get a whole lot more business if people could afford to buy more of their products.

But the people running these companies would have to want to do it. And they're far to self-absorbed, self-serving, and have waaaaaaaay too short a time horizon to actually do it.

Just like those same companies would massively benefit from single-payer - they'd save a ton of money by no longer having to insure their employees, in addition to most of their customers having more money. They still oppose it.

[oldandhappy]

12. ouch

Sad. OK, got it!

[KamaAina]

19. "Just like those same companies would massively benefit from single-payer"

GM does a lot of its manufacturing in Oshawa, Ont. for this very reason. And remember, what's good for General Motors is good for the country.

[smirkymonkey]

4. K&R

[n2doc]

5. Just the way our Oligarchy likes it

Poor, desperate workers who will fight each other for scraps. While a few stay rich beyond their wildest dreams.

[KamaAina]

6. Jebus! That's less than I make!

[Pakhet]

18. it's not less than I "make"

but it's a hell of a lot more than I bring home.

[hfojvt]

7. 75% and median do not seem to go together

Either that or it means that 37% of the jobs will pay MORE than $35,000 a year, and only about 15% paying less than $20,000 a year. Not sure what that means about the median wage of the other 25% of jobs. I would sort of expect some of those jobs to pay less than $35,000, and maybe even less than $20,000.

As for the first stat. Well, what is the percentage of people 25 to 40 who have a bachelor's degree? Probably much higher than 30%.

[jtuck004]

9. Gonna be mowin' down a bunch more of those homes (you just thought you could sell it) and school

books will get rattier, more bridges fall.

Areas of wealth, surrounded by tarpaper and cardboard.

Fear us, we are the most powerful nation in the world.

[Ferd Berfel]

10. Thank the Clinton's, DLC, Third Way, Republicans

NAFTA, CAFTA, OBAMA, and of course TPP & TTIP

Basically, thank the right wing neo-con crowd



They have destroyed the American Dream

[pampango]

16. Reagan and his union busting, trickle-down economics and tax cuts for the rich seem to escape your

scorn.

NAFTA, CAFTA, OBAMA, and of course TPP & TTIP

It's all the fault of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, etc. rather than republicans and their 1% sponsors who bust unions, cut their own taxes and shred the safety net. (I do appreciate that you added "Republicans" in your title to go along with all of the blasts at Democrats - "Clinton's (sic), OBAMA, NAFTA and of course TTP and TTIP".)

Of course, the highest wage countries in the world trade much, much more than the US does. Of course, they also have the strongest unions, the best safety nets and the highest taxes.

[Ferd Berfel]

20. Sorry if I was too subtle for you.

I believe St Ronnie comes under the heading: Republicans

But basically all of it falls under the heading: Neo-cons.

[pampango]

21. Indeed you did add "Republicans" to your list of Democratic villains. I appreciate that.

Forgive me for singling out Saint Ronnie for criticism and for implying that all of our economic problems may not be due to trade.

[Ferd Berfel]

22. The problem is that they are all Neo-Cons

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Ignorant uneducated writer does not have a clue about the meaning of "median"

Median means half above half below. This is taught in Grade 4.
https://www.eduplace.com/math/mw/background/4/09/te_4_09_overview.html

and sometimes Second Grade of Elementary School

The concept of "median" is not rocket science level.

It is meaningless to write "What’s more, nearly 3/4ths of 'job openings due to growth and replacement needs' over the next 10 years will pay a median wage of less than $35,000 a year, with nearly 30% paying a median of about $20,000 a year".

Conceivably (we don't know and can't read minds) the writer means that the 75 percentile wage would be $35K and the 30 percentile wage would be $20K.

But if that is what Mr. Metzgar meant he would have written that. So he must mean something else or he is uneducated.

[1939]

23. Mean, median, and mode

Wages and salaries assume a log-normal or Pareto distribution. Mode is the least and most likely point. Median is the half above and half below point. Mean is the weighted average and is highly affected by the extreme values on the right end of the curve. Mode<Median<Mean.

[pampango]

13. Great post. FDR knew and modern Sweden, Germany and others know how to keep wages high

and inequality low.

[Android3.14]

14. What Bernardo said

One, if what this "journalist" is saying is true as far as the amount, then that $35K is $17.50/hour, more than twice the current minimum wage in most areas of the country.

Second, the author and the editor should find a job that requires less math. Journalists need to be good at many different disciplines.

[alarimer]

17. The point is, most new jobs are not paying very well

Since most of them are in the service industry, which are shitty jobs no matter how you look at it. Yet somehow all anyone can ever talk about are the Silicon Valley type companies, which generate comparatively few actual jobs.

So people without degrees, who used to be able to earn a living at some manufacturing jobs, now have some crappy service job to replace it.

[Android3.14]

27. True, but that's no excuse for such a poorly researched article

And we should be paying a minimum wage of $15. We need to value our service industry, because pretty soon machines will be performing most of the thinking jobs.

With a minimum guaranteed standard of living in a universe of infinite resources, the service industry will be what will save us.

[Adrahil]

15. The conclusions bug me.....

What's of concern here is the disappearance of skilled blue collar jobs. They are being lost to automation. The fact is that most "blue collar" jobs are now unskilled jobs and workers for such jobs are fairly interchangeable. If you don't have a skill that is in demand, you're not going to be able to demand much for it. And the blue-collar jobs that require such skills are disappearing fast....

[Hydra]

24. Of course

More and more work is being done by less and less people due to technology. The problem is, do we try and keep everyone employed, do we agree that employment is not as important as it was and give people income anyway, or do we just do a Darwinist thing and let the people who fall off the musical chairs die or go rogue to survive?

It's possibly the most critical question coming up, other than what are we going to do about climate change? The solutions will probably be linked.

[Adrahil]

25. I kinda think....

a guaranteed basic income will become a necessity.

[Hydra]

28. I hope that's the way we go

And sooner rather than later. I think it's just as likely that most of us will get the axe.

[Todays_Illusion]

26. What's worse is the question of housing, where is the housing for workers earning too little to buy

or even rent in many cities.

[TheFrenchRazor]

29. yep; the "haves" jack up the price of rentals and starter homes, and at the same time do everything

everything possible to make sure that the very people in need of them are making poverty wages, whether their jobs are "skilled" or not.