Friday, August 22, 2014

Low pay and low paid jobs increase

Since 2009, while higher-income sectors saw a drop between 2.1 and 2.5 percent, workers in the three lowest-paid groups were hit much harder, with wage declines between 3.6 and 4.6 percent. Some of the hardest-hit professions within the three lowest-paid groups were maids, housekeepers, home health and personal care aides, and restaurant workers, whose wage decline ranged from 5.8 to 8.3 percent.

 Low-paid jobs are on the rise. Despite the stagnant or diminished level of wages more people found work in lower-paid occupations than in any other industry in the past year. Low-wage and mid-wage jobs constituted a combined 67 percent of job growth from July 2013 to July 2014.

“These real wage declines mean that workers in mid - and low - wage jobs are falling further and further behind,” said National Employment Law Project (NELP) executive director Christine Owens. “These losses are part of an alarming trend toward greater inequality and a shrinking share of the economic pie going to workers’ wages, especially low - and mid - wage workers.

NELP, an nonpartisan organization that has been fighting for a higher national minimum wage, has analyzed job growth data twice since 2009 and found that the trend has been consistent every year: real median hourly wages had declined by 2.8 percent last year, on average, across all occupations, with the greatest losses hitting the exact same groups — mid- and low-wage workers, particularly maids, housekeepers, care aides, and restaurant cooks. Over the next decade, one in four American workers is expected to work a low-wage job.

From here

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