The American Jobs Machine compared expansions in the job market that occurred in two different decades. One of which occurred between 1963-70 and the other 1992-1999. The study mentioned in the article decided to categorize jobs into ten deciles based on similar salaries. The top five deciles would be known as “good jobs” and the bottom five would be the “bad jobs.” Furthermore, Wright and Dwyer decided to account for race and gender differences. For the 1960s, Wright and Dwyer had run into data limitations, so they distinguished four separate groups: white men, white women, black men and black women. For the 1990s, they separated the groups further: white men, white women, black men, black women with the addition of Hispanic men and Hispanic women.
Wright and Dwyer's analysis found that in the 1990s, the job expansion was very polarized. That is to say, there was a great deal of expansion among the top three deciles, but there was an unprecedented expansion in the bottom one as well. In contrast to the 1960s, there was an expansion that was more along the lines of “upgrading the employment structure.” Essentially, there was expansion that would allow somebody employed at the bottom decile to eventually move up to the third; the fourth up to the sixth; the seventh up to the tenth.
One thing that this study illustrated that I see almost daily is that the job expansion in the 1990s is highly racially polarized. For instance, the top three deciles had a predominantly white expansion, whereas the bottom docile had more black and Hispanic expansion than any of the white expansion at the top. I personally see this (at least the bottom decile) every time I go into a McDonald's restaurant because, depending on the location, the workers are predominantly African American.
Two public policies are suggested that would theoretically close down the “low road” and “help to pave the high road,” and those include raising the minimum wage and strengthening the labor movement. Personally, I do not see how raising minimum wage would do anything other than cause employers to let people go simply because they cannot afford them. However, Wright and Dwyer do mention that increasing the middle range of jobs could be done by making it easier to acquire job skills. The problem is not so much increasing the skilled labor population but also increasing the incentive for employing these newly skilled laborers.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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I don’t think the economy is creating any new jobs for people today. The economy is getting worse and worse. I believe stores like Wall-mart are taking over our world. Everyone is going there for jobs because they will hire almost anyone. They pay decent money and you can get benefits when working there. But they are shutting down the mom and pop stores and putting them all out of business, which in turn creates fewer jobs for people. In Michigan for example there are a lot of small towns with their own home-town business, Wall-mart decides to open one of their store in one of the small towns and forces a lot of family stories to shut down and hurts the towns economy.
ReplyDeleteI think that we are moving in the opposite direction of creating new jobs. Sometimes I feel that the economy of America will never get better. I feel like people will never be able to work together and come half way in the terms of means of production. Sometimes it seems like all of Americans believe in the capitalism theory that is a winner takes a system and leaves the “poor” guy is still poor. I hope that one day American people will grow up and stop only thinking about themselves.
I am in total agreement with you on the state of the economy. However, after looking over the chapter I believe that there is a small window of opportunity in whih we may be able to improve our economy. I base this off of the fact that history is bondto repeat itself. This isn't the first tme that Americahas been facd with a form of recession. I'm not exactly sure how and when we are going to get out but, I do believe that we will. I don't think that capitalism is the best way to go about this though. The whole goal of capitalism like I stated before is to make a profit off of another individual.Especially with the way we think were implementing new jobs. We create new jobs with a twist. The twist is the the stamp of capitalism. By the individual with the means of production being able to hire and fire individuals at ones convinence.
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