Economy Producing Mostly Bad Jobs? Not so fast.
 

FactCheck.org - Annenberg Political Fact Check


A new set of figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show HIGHER-paying jobs growing faster. A FactCheck.org exclusive. (But there's evidence on both sides).



Now that the economy is growing and creating new jobs, John Kerry has been saying that the quality of those jobs is "much lower" than the quality of jobs that have been lost. A recent ad by some Kerry allies even shows a middle-aged man reporting for his new job wearing a paper hat at a seedy-looking burger joint.

Well, hold on -- there's strong new evidence to the contrary.

A new set of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually shows solid growth in employment in relatively higher -paying occupations including construction workers, health-care professionals, business managers, and teachers, and virtually no growth at all in relatively lower-paying occupations including office clerks and assembly-line workers. It's the most detailed breakdown yet -- looking at 154 different job and industry groupings. These statistics are a FactCheck.org exclusive -- supplied to us by BLS at our request and not previously published.

Another statistic often overlooked by Bush critics is that average earnings of rank-and-file private-sector workers have increased since Bush took office, though modestly. Even after adjusting for inflation -- including the rising price of gasoline --those earnings are up just over 1% since January 2001, despite the recession and the initially slow recovery.

Rest of Article (long but interesting) here

Right. It depends on whether we're looking at fastest growing occupations: http://www.bls.gov/emp/emptab3.htm or highest number of new jobs: http://www.bls.gov/emp/emptab4.htm. Most of those new jobs are pretty low skilled and low paying but you'd have to also take into account that more people are needed to fill positions like cashier than brain surgeon and growth in those occupations is going to occur in a strong retail economy.

Now, is it possible that your article has cherry picked among those lists to bolster it's argument? For one thing, construction workers and teachers do trained and very respectable work but is it really high paying? Second, they may not be hiring office clerks and assembly line workers but the stats I posted indicate high growth for sales clerks and food prep workers so there are large gains being made in low paying work contrary to this statement: "virtually no growth at all in relatively lower-paying occupations" as taken directly from your article.

Basically, I think it's possible to take a large amount of statistics and paint a picture any way you want to. However, I also believe the economy is improving significantly in almost all areas.

Yes constructions pays well.

-Rudey

Overall, I agree with that. It's this election year mode though. The Left is seemingly just ignoring all of the huge strides our economy has been making in recent years. What's even more surprising is that people are actually buying into their rhetoric. Well, it's not really all that surprising.