Not So Golden Arches

What venerable institution has a 6.2% acceptance rate, but only provides an entry-level promise that averages only $8.89-an-hour wage? Such selectivity is reminiscent of the acceptance rates of such prestigious institutions such as Yale, Princeton, Harvard or Stanford, except these universities actually have more liberal admissions policies. With approximately one million applicants, McDonald’s – yes, that McDonald’s – held its first national “hiring day” (April 19^th), determined to fill 62,000 new jobs. It was a good day for America’s employment statistics, but a bad day for the average American pay scale. “[T]hat's more jobs created by one company in a single day than the net job creation of the entire U.S. economy in 2009.” May 5^th jobs.aol.com

An average worker in the fast food sector, according to AOL, pulls down a meager $20,800 a year, less than half the U.S. average pay of $43,400 per annum. The lesson continues to be to pay attention to the information behind the rise in employment, looking not only at new job creation, but the numbers of people who cannot find work at all (including those who have given up looking completely, many older and middle-aged workers shoved unceremoniously out of the contemporary-skills job market). Those who find occasional or part-time work, but want more, also don’t make their way on to the federal jobless rolls.

But even more disturbing than the harsh numbers hidden behind the unemployment numbers is the completely devastating trend that new job creation seems to have on our average national wage structure. “According to a recent analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the biggest growth in private-sector job creation in the past year occurred in positions in the low-wage retail, administrative, and food service sectors of the economy. While 23% of the jobs lost in the Great Recession that followed the economic meltdown of 2008 were "low-wage" (those paying $9-$13 an hour), 49% of new jobs added in the sluggish "recovery" are in those same low-wage industries. On the other end of the spectrum, 40% of the jobs lost paid high wages ($19-$31 an hour), while a mere 14% of new jobs pay similarly high wages.” AOL.com.

In 2010, a quarter of the new jobs added in 2010 were “temporary,” employment with virtually no benefits and less job security. Everything about our employment statistics is tentative. Nobody seems to be willing to step up in the sectors that have traditionally provided higher paying wages to make longer-term job commitments. There is uncertainty as to the sustainability of the “recovery,” the impact of a dithering Congress on budgetary cut-backs and their likely larger scale rippling into the private sector or the desperate cuts being sought at state and local levels that should, likewise, have severe ramifications in the private sector.

For students encumbered by loans – where recent revisions to bankruptcy laws have made escaping such burdens close to impossible – the unemployment scene is untenably cruel. For undergraduates, the situation is bad. For professional students getting graduate degrees in an inhospitable job market, the situation is beyond grave, yet with contractions in financial aid, loans appear to be the basic financing tool of young men and women with hire aspirations: “The average amount borrowed annually by law students jumped 50 percent from 2001 to 2010, the Hartford Business Journal reports. In the last academic year, law students borrowed an average of $68,827 for public schools and $106,249 for private educations…For the 2001-2002 academic year, the average amount borrowed was $46,499 for a public law school and $70,147 for a private one… “ABAJournal.com, May 9^th. It seems, very clearly, that without a solid and deep change in our employment structure, we are in for a very long waiting period for a true recovery.

I’m Peter Dekom, simply looking behind the unfounded optimism that politicians seem to bubble… and babble.