(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
The Gutting of the American Working Class [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-08-08
Over the last few decades, the global economic system has been reorganized, with manufacturing jobs pushed to the semi-periphery and periphery of the system, while the core of the system is increasingly driven by the service economy. Today, there are 135 million Americans working in the service industry, compared to just 13 million in manufacturing. The promise of a post-industrial service economy was lauded by economists and the press , but that promise has not borne fruit for all of America’s workers.
Despite educational attainment in the United States being at its highest rate ever, joblessness among people with a high school diploma or less, has been steadily rising.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2021, the unemployment rate for people over 25 with a high school diploma was 6.2% compared to a national average of 4.7%, and 8.3 for those with less than a high school diploma. Not only do people with a high school diploma have higher rates of unemployment, they also have lower median weekly earnings.
It is self-evident that people with higher educational attainment will receive higher earnings, what is worrying is that since 1990, those with high school diplomas or less, have experienced a far slower rate of earnings growth compared to everyone else.
For these Americans, finding jobs is proving increasingly difficult, and when they do find them, those jobs often pay as much as they did decades ago. For instance, the typical person with a bachelor’s degree earned $89,400 in 1991, but by 2019, this had grown to over $100,000 in 2019, whereas a person with a high school diploma earned nearly $52,300 in 1991, which by 2019 had declined to over $48,700. What we are witnessing is the immiseration and gutting of the American working class.
The optimism of economists decades ago about the impact of the post-industrial economy on the entire country has proved to be a false dawn. For many Americans, this period has seen them become poorer and this is even more important as we enter a period of inflation will be vital to protecting the wealth of these Americans.
What this means for America is clear: our economic system is systematically failing a section of Americans. Those with a high school diploma or less, simply have no reason to support an economic system which has left them poorer. This is a system that creates resentments and instability by pitting the interests of these Americans against those of the winners of the economic system. Yet, even the winners are imperiled. The political consequences of this widening inequality must be added to what we have seen with the pandemic: that shifting manufacturing abroad has actually weakened the United States and left the country prone to rivals such as Russia and China. We need to reimagine our economic system to deliver more broad0based gains as well as reducing our dependence on our rivals.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/8/2115304/-The-Gutting-of-the-American-Working-Class
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
