I Can’t Get No… Satisfaction

The prolonged economic downturn has driven so many people to stop looking for work, others to opt for early draws on skimpy and diminishing Social Security values, many to settle for lower pay plus under-utilization of experience or education, and many others to grab for whatever transitory part-time jobs they can get. Bottom line is that the unemployment statistics really don’t reflect the American job picture accurately. Having a good job and making enough money are elusive goals for most Americans these days.

It’s worse at the entry level, particularly for recent college grads. Unless you are at the top of the relevant academic food chain or possess clearly valuable and ascertainable skills, people in this category are lucky if they get jobs at all. When they do, 41% of recent grads have lower-paying work that really doesn’t require their level of education, according to a survey recently conducted by consulting firm, Accenture. They have supplanted the high school grads who used to get those jobs, but employers can be picky with the few openings they have. While in 2012 economists predicted 2013 would show a 13% rise in the hiring of new college grads, reality has yielded a nasty 2.1% increase instead according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Job satisfaction for most Americans is the worst it has been in many decades. Three out of four workers would be most willing to switch jobs if they could find a better fit, better pay or both. Younger workers have added “doing good for the world” to their job criteria, perhaps a replacement value for decent pay.

Those at the bottom of the job spectrum, of any age, are left with the least number of viable options of anyone in the working world. Nothing screams this reality louder than the settlement of a ten-year-old hotel workers strike against the Chicago’s Michigan Avenue Congress Plaza Hotel. After disputes over pay and benefit cuts back in 2002, the union struck… and it just settled on May 30^th. “A hotel attorney said if the workers do return to work, they would do so under the terms of the contract that expired a year before the strike began, including wages that the union argues are now half the city’s standard.” AP, May 30^th. Utter desperation.

As the American Bar Association survey continues to sustain, well over half of law grads in the past two years don’t find jobs related to the law… if they find jobs at all. With staggering student loans that apply to most professional schools, these young wanabee-workers are slammed in the teeth from day one. As companies tighten their legal fee/work relationships and online alternatives exist for ordinary legal services, even larger firms are beginning to feel the weight of a contracting service economy.

The math, science and engineering skills we do need aren’t coming out of U.S. colleges fast enough, and the quality collapse in too many of our public schools dealing with budget cuts has created a generation of students with insufficient math and science skills to generate more sophisticated degrees when they get to college. As American wealth continues to grow at the top, the average American worker continues to see a steady and unbroken erosion of buying power that began in 2002, well before the recession. If we really want to see an improvement in the employment picture, we need to produce workers with value-producing skills that generate competitive products and services that meet global demands. We just aren’t remotely focusing our efforts to create those opportunities at the levels that defined our successes in the past.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as many in Congress call for increased military spending to counter terrorism, I ask why they aren’t building a country worthy of that level of protection first!