The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jobless rate low, but often, so is pay
Unemployment is hovering near a five-decade low, workforce participation is at the highest level in six years and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently called the labor market “strong.” Yet 44% of Americans age 18 to 64 are low-wage workers, according to a Brookings Institution report. What’s happening
While many are benefiting from high demand for labor, data indicate not all new jobs are good, high-paying positions. The definition of “lowwage” differs from place to place. The authors define low-wage workers as those who earn less than two-thirds of the median wage for full-time workers, adjusted for the regional cost of living.
“We have the largest and longest expansion and job growth in modern history,” Marcela Escobari, co-author of the report, said in a phone interview. That expansion “is showing up in very different ways to half of the worker population that finds itself unable to move.”
What it means
The millions of Americans in low-wage jobs are likely to stay there. Workers who make $10 to $15 an hour have a 52% chance of remaining in that wage bracket when they switch jobs. For middle-wage workers, or those earning $19 to $24 an hour, there’s a 46% chance that a job transition would result in lower pay. That’s bad news for the nearly 3.5 million workers who quit their jobs in September alone.
What’s next
As for the future, while some jobs will be replaced by automation and robots, the main concern is displacement, Escobari said. “Both the industries that are growing and the industries that are shrinking are low wage,” and available work “is going to be more low-wage work,” she said.