By Tracy Russo for Democrats.Org
A few weeks ago President Bush proudly patted himself on the back when announcing a mere 296 billion dollar budget deficit. Now, here is more proof of how his handling the economy is playing out. According to The LA Times, the situation has become bleak for recent college grads:
Wage stagnation . . . is now hitting people with bachelor’s degrees for the first time in 30 years. Earnings for workers with four-year degrees fell 5.2% from 2000 to 2004 when adjusted for inflation, according to White House economists.
It’s a remarkable setback for workers who thought they were well-positioned to win some of the benefits of the nation’s economic growth, and it may help explain why surveys show that many Americans think President Bush has not managed the economy well. These workers did well during the last period of economic growth, 1995 to 2000, with inflation-adjusted average wages rising 12%.
“But how can that be,” you ask, aghast, “I always hear the President talking about loads of new jobs he is creating with his sound fiscal policies,” you continue…
Well…not exactly…
Companies have continued their long effort to replace salaried positions with lower-paid, nonsalaried jobs, including part-time and freelance positions without benefits. Those contingent positions make up nearly half of the 6.5 million jobs created since 2001, said Paul Harrington, a labor economist at Northeastern University in Boston.
Harrington said the number of salaried jobs increased an average of 11.5% during the last five economic recoveries, compared with 2.5% during the current recovery.
“There’s clear deterioration in the college labor market,” he said. “The American economy just does not generate jobs the way it has historically.”
Employment recruiter Alan Guarino has seen a similar change in his work. He says about 15% of workers with four-year college degrees are working at “gray-collar” jobs below their skill level, such as in retail, mainly because they cannot find better-paying jobs; before 2001, the figure was about 10%.
“A very significant percentage of the jobs we are creating are contingent jobs,” not salaried positions, said Guarino, chief executive of Cornell International, a staffing firm.
With contigent jobs, graduates working at jobs that pay barely above the minimum wage (which House Republicans still refuse to let be decided upon) and working more than one just to make ends meet you’d think the American people would get more than a celebration over billions of dollars of deficit. But, sadly, no.
In an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released July 14, 60% of respondents said they disapproved of how Bush was handling the economy.
“The administration is saying the only reason people are not sharing in the recovery is they don’t have the right skills,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. But if college graduates are not doing well, Mishel said, “what does that say?”
What does it say about an Administration that helps the rich get richer while the poor get poorer and America’s next young people flounder.
Zack Karram contributed to the writing and research of this post.
Posted in Press Releases