10 Economic Trends that Spell Doom for America's Workers

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-economic-trends-spell-doom-americas-workers

***SNIP

1. Fast Food Workers Have Gotten Older

Low-paying jobs in fast food were once dominated by teenagers and high school students, who typically moved on to better paying jobs after attending college or trade school. But according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), 36.4% of fast-food workers are now between 25 and 54—which underscores the fact that many Americans who would have had high-paying white-collar or blue-collar jobs in the past are now stuck in dead-end service jobs. And the BLS’ U-3 rate doesn’t reflect the fact that so many of the employed have become the underemployed. In April, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report on the toll that the Great Recession (which, for millions of Americans, has really been a depression) had taken on the U.S.’ job market: NELP found that while higher-paying jobs had accounted for 41% of the Great Recession’s job losses, they had accounted for only 30% of the country’s “recovery growth.” But while lower-paying jobs had accounted for only 22% of the job losses, they accounted for 44% of the “recovery growth.” So in other words, most of the new jobs that have brought the BLS’ official U-3 unemployment rate down to 5.8% are dead-end service jobs—and people who once had high-paying white-collar or blue-collar jobs are now working part time at McDonalds or Burger King.

2. Alternative Unemployment Figures Paint a Grim Picture of the U.S. Job Market

The BLS’ best known formula for calculating unemployment is the abovementioned U-3; lesser known is the BLS’ U-6 formula, which takes a broader view of unemployment and includes some people the U-3 omits (such as part-time workers who would like full-time employment and short-term “discouraged workers”). The BLS’ U-6 figure for September was 11.8%. But statistics analyst John Williams, who publishes the Shadow Government Stats website, believes that even the U-6 is misleading because it has too narrow a definition of unemployment—and Williams regularly offers his own alternative unemployment statistics using a formula that includes long-term discouraged workers. According to Williams’ formula, the U.S.’ real unemployment rate for September 2014 was a whopping 23.1%. Some would argue that Williams’ formula, by adding to the U-6, reflects a combination of unemployment and underemployment rather than strictly unemployment; regardless, it paints a troubling picture of the U.S. economy that is both troubling and informative.

3. Europeans More Likely To Achieve the American Dream

In the past, Europeans immigrated to the U.S. in search of greater upward mobility. But with the U.S. economy resembling that of a banana republic, the American Dream is, ironically, easier to achieve in parts of Europe. In 2011, a report by Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project compared upward mobility in the U.S. to that of nine other major countries, including Germany, France, Australia, Canada and the U.K.: Pew found that the U.S. was the lowest in terms of upward mobility. In other words, Americans who are born into poverty are more likely to remain in poverty than people in some parts of Europe.

4. Food Insecurity Persists

In 2000, 17 million Americans were receiving food stamps, but according to the USDA, the number is now 46.2 million. That is a slight improvement from the USDA’s figure of 47.8 million in December 2012, but it’s still 29 million more people than in 2000. And while food stamps decrease the amount of hunger in the United States, they don’t eliminate it: according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 14.5% of U.S. households were food-insecure at some point during 2012. And the USDA has reported that in Texas, that number was 18.4% from 2010-2012. Texas, of course, is a state where far-right Republicans have considerable influence, and the fact that Texas’ food insecurity is higher than the national average illustrates how detrimental the economic policies of Republicans and Tea Party are in that state.

[seveneyes]

1. That giant sucking sound

Is not just youth shotgunning beers.