This originally appeared as a Tomgram over at Tomdispatch and was picked up by the Nation…
…what a weird economic downturn and recovery this has been. From the end of an “average” American recession, it ordinarily takes slightly less than a year to reach or surpass the previous employment peak. But in June 2013—four full years after the official end of the Great Recession—we had recovered only 6.6 million jobs, or just three-quarters of the 8.7 million jobs we lost.
Here’s the truly mysterious aspect of this “recovery”: 21 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession were low wage, meaning they paid $13.83 an hour or less. But 58 percent of the jobs regained fall into that category. A common explanation for that startling statistic is that the bad jobs are coming back first and the good jobs will follow.
But let me suggest another explanation: the good jobs are here among us right now—it’s just their wages, their benefits and the long-term security that have vanished…
via How to Become a Part-Time Worker Without Really Trying | The Nation.
Related articles
- Tomgram: Barbara Garson, How to Become a Part-Time Worker Without Really Trying (tomdispatch.com)
- 5 reasons behind our part-time economy (bizjournals.com)
- Behold The Part-Time Worker Society: “We Won’t Start Hiring Full-Time People” (capoliticalnews.com)
- Full-on Recession, Part-time Boom (cepr.net)
