Mar
24
Blog Post # 9 Nicholas Lee
March 24, 2015 | Leave a Comment
There is no denying that the US is still on the road to recovery after the Great Recession of 2008. While the stock market and other financial institutions have recovered, the quality of life for ordinary Americans based on employment rates and pay wages, have not. Actually, according to the articles we read this week, I actually think it got a little worse.
Yes, the unemployment rate has gone down to less than 6% from a high of 10% about 5 years ago, but what I always was skeptical about was if this was really because more jobs were created or if it was because people were leaving the job market. I always remember what my government teacher in high school said how when they say that the unemployment goes up or down to always question the reasoning behind it and not just assume it is because more jobs were created. According to the New York Times article though, Schwartz the author states that it was mostly because of Americans leaving the labor market and not because new jobs have been created.
This creates the illusion that we are recovering and creating new jobs, when it is really American’s giving up looking for work. The problem with this that many conservatives argue is that, all these Americans that could potentially be employed and working are instead just living off of disability benefits like welfare and further expanding programs like Obamacare. Another point to make is the incentive for Americans to go back to work.
While the average work week still remains at 34.5 hours according to the article, in the last five years, the average hourly earnings has almost unnoticeably risen by 0.2 percentage points, creating almost no incentive for Americans to rejoin toe labor force. This also brings up an interesting point made in the USMAYORS article we had to read about the quality of jobs that were created during the recession. According to the article the jobs gained during the recession pay 23% less than the jobs that were lost during the recession. This raises the question if we have really recovered from the recession. While politicians say we have recovered, why then have the quality of jobs in terms of pay decreased and are jobs being created are actually jobs that people want to work?
It is very concerning how our employment rate is decreasing not because of job creation but because people are dropping out. Along with the quality of jobs that are being created, there doesn’t seem to be much of an incentive for people to rejoin the work force. What is most concerning about this is how the percentage of Americans in the workforce is at it lowest since the 1970s. Nearly 3 million Americans have already left the work force since 2007 and with the “sluggish” job growth that is plaguing our country, I find it hard for anyone to celebrate the decrease in the unemployment rate and debate how we can fix this problem.
