Part-Time is Now Full-Time!

Here’s a little test about our employment statistics – officially, June added about 288 thousand jobs dropping the unemployment rate to a tolerable 6.1% (from 6.3% in May; it has improved a full percentage point over the past year). Do you feel that your job is secure and that you will continue to generate normal annual raises? If you have a job but wanted to find an alternative, how hard do you think it would be for you to move? What do you think the employment future holds for young people in high school and college? Do you think that the United States can create solid, well-paying jobs for those who want them? Is our employment posture here in the United States globally competitive? What advice would you give a college student today? Will the coming generations live a better lifestyle than the past generations? Why? Do you really believe that the 6.1% official BLS unemployment rate is accurately reflective of the job-value structure in the United States? Will that number change in the coming months? Do you think the American economic miracle is over or continuing?

The above questions, are the “feelings” behind the other statistics that tell us fewer people are applying to and graduating from college, that high school dropout rates for large inner-city residents is staggering (around half), our academic standards are falling, that the bulk of job growth are in lower paying sectors with fewer promotional and growth opportunities, and that there has been a huge segment of former workers who have simply stopped looking for work (and hence are no longer reported in the above unemployment statistic). As Congress stalls in continuing the budgets for the limited number of infrastructure projects they actually have approved (many of which need to be done over the summer), can we expect a dip in even the official employment rate?

“[T]here’s a gnawing fear among economists that the improving data provides false comfort. More than 26 million people are in part-time jobs, significantly more than before the recession, making it one of the corners of the labor market that has been slowest to heal. That has led to worries that the workforce may be becoming permanently polarized, with part-timers stuck on one side and full-time workers on the other.

“‘What we’re seeing is a growing trend of low-quality part-time jobs,’ said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Work Week Initiative, which is pushing for labor reforms. ‘It’s creating this massive unproductive workforce that is unable to productively engage in their lives or in the economy.’

“Washington has begun to take notice. As the unemployment rate has dropped, the debate among policymakers has expanded from providing aid to those without a job to include improving conditions for those who do. President Obama has raised the minimum wage for federal contract workers, many of whom are part-time. The White House is also building support for a measure that would require companies to provide paid sick leave. Nationwide protests at retailers and fast-food chains that heavily rely on part-time labor have called for more reliable schedules.” Washington Post, July 2^nd.

If 95% of the earnings gains since 2009 have gone to the top 5% of workers, and if the massively terrifying “banana-republic” skew of American income inequality reflects the “big change” that is here to stay, what are we, as Americans, going to do to take care of our own? Less government? Many think that’s the only answer. But infrastructure and education die on the vine without government. More government? But we have over $2 trillion of unfunded state and municipal pension obligations that really have no source of getting paid. Likewise, the seemingly never-ending American military exploits – generating trillions of long-term, interest-bearing deficits – have begun to generate huge current and future demands for disability, pension and other benefits to the soldiers who fought those wars. Look at the scandal at Veterans Administration hospitals and ask yourself if that could have happened if they had enough doctors and other medical professionals.

As Americans, we have flunked the balancing tests we needed to apply before we engaged in massive and expensive military missions far away, resulting in blowback and long-term terrorist challenges that we helped supply, motivate and, one and a while, train. We failed in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And now we have to pay for it.

In the end, our job picture only improves if we are willing to step up to the plate and invest in our future. We need to educate our future generations into globally-competitive jobs. We still are seeing so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, & math) jobs begging for lack of qualified candidates. Our children need to be informed of the job picture, continuously, as they make their life choices. We need the infrastructure of a winner-country. I do not like to be reminded about how much first rate roads, fiber linkage, dams, etc. have been built in China (they spend a multiple of what we spend as a percentage of GDP)… as my car hits another traffic jam on a pothole-invested highway. America has to focus on research, the kind that creates new technologies and discoveries that generate jobs and competitive advantage. Or we can just let the United States unravel from inaction and apathy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are no slogan-driven simple solutions to the economic mire we have created for ourselves.