Guardian: Almost 80% of US workers live from paycheck to paycheck. Here’s why

America doesn’t have a jobs crisis. It has a ‘good jobs’ crisis – where too much employment is insecure, and poorly paid

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The official rate of unemployment in America has plunged to a remarkably low 3.8%. The Federal Reserve forecasts that the unemployment rate will reach 3.5% by the end of the year.

But the official rate hides more troubling realities: legions of college grads overqualified for their jobs, a growing number of contract workers with no job security, and an army of part-time workers desperate for full-time jobs. Almost 80% of Americans say they live from paycheck to paycheck, many not knowing how big their next one will be.

Blanketing all of this are stagnant wages and vanishing job benefits. The typical American worker now earns around $44,500 a year, not much more than what the typical worker earned in 40 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Although the US economy continues to grow, most of the gains have been going to a relatively few top executives of large companies, financiers, and inventors and owners of digital devices.

When Republicans delivered their $1.5tn tax cut last December they predicted a big wage boost for American workers. Forget it. Wages actually dropped in the second quarter of this year.



Not even the current low rate of unemployment is forcing employers to raise wages.

read more at UK Guardian

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4 COMMENTS

  1. The only good jobs to be had are ones available through nepotism/favoritism – sit at desk and surf the web 35 of your 40 hours a week for $150K/year, while “managing” people making $12/hour with no benefits.

  2. Sad fact. The society of consumers is very sensitive to financial changes. I’ve read that during Great American Depression (1930s) many people worked just for a plate of meal. During that time Soviet Union (your not loved Stalin) invited around 30 000 american workers, gave them job. Those were engineers and profi. To be thankfull, i must say they helped USSR to build thousands modern factories and plants, helped USSR to make a giant industrial jump and become progressive industrial country.
    Hope, USA will overcome now these problems.

  3. These statistics are all lies. The truth is much worse. Many people today are paid basically in cash with no benefits at all. Others are totally off the books. We know a person who lost two good jobs, with full benefits, through no fault of his own. He is in his fifties now and has difficulty getting jobs. He finally got one at about $14/hour doing basically slave labor with no benefits at all. This is why the elitists want all this cheap labor from over there. They have raped the Unions too. College graduates are saddled with a mountain of debt up to $100K or more! This country is heading down fast now. It is bankrupt morally and fiscally. It is only a matter of time. Most people live hand to mouth and have no savings at all. Others with some savings are at risk when the bottom falls out as it most certainly will.

    • Roofers are high risk jobs but not paid for that risk. A simple fall could make them invalids for life but most of these corrupt employers have no medical or compensation insurance for these workers at all. They are on their own for slave wages. This keeps costs, but not necessarily prices, down on new homes and buildings. The other day I observed a Mexican worker up on top, not of a roof, but a chimney! This country is a cesspool today taking advantage of ignorant low end workers.

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