Startling Stats: "Quality Jobs" In The WorkPlace > Volatility, Instability and Insecurity

Almost every single time there's the usual hyped-up press releases from different cities or economic development offices they always mention "quality-jobs" or "high-paying jobs". Even for those fortunate to have any kind of job or any kind of income it's a mixed bag  for everyone making less than $105,000 per year - rich or poor.

Steady Jobs, With Pay and Hours That Are Anything But

By PATRICIA COHENMAY 31, 2017

 

Blogger's Note: Hundreds of jobs created at two recent company re-locations in District 3 - Dexcom and Santander Consumer Finance are either manufacturing jobs or call-center jobs with average wages $10-12 per hour.

"Up to 50 jobs' at the most recent news about the highly-automated Niagara water-bottling facility are manufacturing jobs with a $3,500 tax-credit for each job created for even part-time work.

"Monthly expenses can pendulum as much as income, but the two do not necessarily move in tandem. An analysis of 250,000 bank accounts by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a nonprofit research arm of the bank, found that roughly 80 percent of households had an insufficient cash buffer to manage the mismatch between income and expenses in a given month.

Few people can comfortably ride out the inevitable financial bronco ride. “Only households that earn $105,000 or more a year are secure against the volatility they are exposed to,” said Diana Farrell, the institute’s president and chief executive. “It’s not just about the unemployed or the poor.”

instability and insecurity are increasingly a part of middle-class life, too.

. . .  Monthly expenses can pendulum as much as income, but the two do not necessarily move in tandem. An analysis of 250,000 bank accounts by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a nonprofit research arm of the bank, found that roughly 80 percent of households had an insufficient cash buffer to manage the mismatch between income and expenses in a given month.

Few people can comfortably ride out the inevitable financial bronco ride. “Only households that earn $105,000 or more a year are secure against the volatility they are exposed to,” said Diana Farrell, the institute’s president and chief executive. “It’s not just about the unemployed or the poor.” 

In another study from this article: "To Mr. Morduch and his co-author, Rachel Schneider, the rise in income volatility is an indication of how businesses in an era of advancing technology and global competition have shifted risk onto employees." 

Read more > New York Times 31 May 2017       

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN DREAM? 

First Question: How do you measure it?

Top 1 Percent of Americans Reaped Two-Thirds of Income Gains in Last Economic Expansion

Income Concentration in 2007 Was at Highest Level Since 1928, New Analysis Shows

Source: http://www.cbpp.org/research

"Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.[1]During those years, the Piketty-Saez data also show, the inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households."
Piketty and Saez’s unique data series on income inequality, based on IRS files, is particularly valuable because it provides detailed information on income gains at the top of the income scale and extends back to 1913.

2007 marked the fifth straight year in which income gains at the top outpaced those among the rest of the population.
From 2002 to 2007, the average inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households rose 62 percent, compared to 4 percent for the bottom 90 percent of households
(see Table 1).

The Piketty-Saez data has been updated. An analysis of the new data as of March 7, 2012 can be found here: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3697.

 

How America’s big cities are becoming more unequal: Income gap between wealthy and poor is still growing five years after end of the recession [2015]

The analysis compared 2013 census data for the top five per cent of earners with the bottom 20 per cent to work out the difference in wages. 

The Mesa gap was -7.5 where the rich only took home 7.5 times more than poor.

The gap between the rich and poor in big cities in the United States is still widening. The map to the right shows the most equal and unequal cities, according to the 2015 report by the Brookings Institution
Read more: here

The American Dream Index: Behind The Numbers       Source: Forbes 29 May 2017

Is the economy strong enough to deliver the American dream? Middle-class prosperity, that is?

The states highlighted in green are off to a good start in the Trump era, according to the American Dream Index.

 

We address that question with a new index that blends seven economic factors into a single number for each state. Employment growth, layoffs, construction activity and entrepreneurship are among the components in our formula.

The American Dream Index aims to capture a middle-class zeitgeist. Our jobs number focuses on goods-producing employment—in manufacturing, mining, construction and agriculture, that is—because that's where America is supposed to get great again.

We downplay the service sector, even though service keeps more people busy than production does. Why? Because the service sector too rarely offers the middle-class jobs that used to be the heart of the economy. Neither $150-an-hour doctors nor $9-an-hour retail clerks are part of the middle class.
The American Dream Index will be, by design, a lot more volatile than gross domestic product, the usual thermometer for economic progress. It is sensitive to recent layoff announcements and to short-term trends in job creation and in unemployment claims. It varies considerably from state to state and from month to month. Forbes compiles an annual look at the Best States for Business, which measures the strength of the local economy. The ADI is focused on the trendline.

Mass layoffs figure into our index, since those affect the animal spirits of middle America more than the small job gains and losses that drive the unemployment rate. We incorporate a measure of entrepreneurial verve from the Kauffman Foundation. We have labor force participation in the mix; some states are doing better than others at bucking the discouraging downward trend in this number.

Some words of advice from the authors of the Inequality study:

". . local policy-makers should not ignore other tools they have at hand - from education to economic development to housing and zoning policies - that are essential for improving social mobility and sustaining income diversity in big cities today.'