More Jobs, Worse Work

Since the trough of the last recession in November 2001, private sector payrolls in the US have risen a mere 0.2 percent, well below the nearly 7.5 percent average increase in the 31-month period after each of the last six American economic recoveries. In this opinion article for the New York Times, Stephen S. Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley, writes that the reason for this anemic growth is that despite the increase in employment, many of these jobs have been low-paying and undesirable. According to the statistics, jobs in lower-end industries made up 44 percent of new hiring from March to June, whereas jobs in higher-end industries made up a mere 29 percent of total job growth. Roach attributes the trend to companies “replacing high-wage workers here with like-quality, low-wage workers abroad,” a form of labor arbitrage which he characterizes as “likely to be an enduring feature of the economy” – YaleGlobal