It seems good news that more businesses are hiring now, and it is. But it leaves a lot to be hoped for.
That’s because many of the jobs don’t offer the wages and security that American workers could count on in the years before our manufacturing base evaporated, and even in the runup to the recession the country is still trying to pull out of. A new report suggests that 50 percent of American workers without four-year degrees will not be able to earn enough money to pay for the necessities of life by working at the jobs that will be created over the next seven or eight years.
The report, Coming Up Short: Wages, Public Assistance and Economic Security Across America, was done by the group Wider Opportunities for Women. It uses government figures to answer questions about the economic futures of Americans, especially those without bachelors’ degrees. It’s based on data from Washington, D.C, Massachusetts and five more states: Delaware, Kentucky, New Mexico, Mississippi and Michigan.
Underlying the report’s conclusions are Department of Labor projections that between 2008 and 2018, the number of professional and service jobs would increase, while employment in “production,” including manufacturing, would continue the decline begun years earlier. So look for lots of jobs for nurses, home health aides and customer service representatives, but fewer well-paying factory jobs. The fastest growth, says the DoL, will come in jobs requiring associates’ degrees.
Taking analysis to the next level, the WOW report projects that fewer than 13 percent of the jobs to be created by 2018 that can be filled by people without four-year degrees will support a single parent and two children. Even if there are two income earners (both parents working), only 43 percent of the new jobs created by 2018 will allow families to achieve basic economic security, it says. (The report assumes that the workers it describes need child care and must pay transportation expenses. But it also assumes that they are receiving benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.)
So a young American faces a lifetime in which a four-year degree is increasingly beyond his or her means; the job available without it likely won’t pay the bills; and retirement must be financed without a pension—with Social Security plus a slender 401k, or plus nothing at all. Do we worry for fear our children and grandchildren will suffer financially if the deficit isn’t reduced? Look around: they’re suffering already.
