Job Quality Index Says Economy Has a Way to Go

By SETH SANDRONSKY

The US economy has been expanding for a decade after the Great Recession ended in June 2009. The unemployment rate of 3.5% at the end of 2019 was a 50-year low. What is not to like about this economy?

Well, there is much to dislike about the actual quality of jobs. I mean, we can agree that quantity does not equal quality. On that note, we turn to four academics who unpack job quality.

“The Job Quality Index (JQI) assesses job quality in the United States by measuring desirable higher-wage/higher-hour jobs versus lower-wage/lower-hour jobs,” according to researchers Daniel Alpert, Jeffrey Ferry, Robert C. Hockett and Amir Khaleghi. “The JQI results also may serve as a proxy for the overall health of the US jobs market, since the index enables month-by-month tracking of the direction and degree of change in high-to-low job composition.”

The four academics focus on the private sector. That is the site of the largely union-free service sector of the economy.

“The history of private sector employment in the US over the past three decades is one of overall degradation in the ability of many American jobs to support households — even those with multiple jobholders,” according to the researchers. “The JQI illustrates that part of the reason for this is that the US has, over the relevant period, become more dependent on jobs that offer fewer hours of work at lower relative wages.”

Meanwhile, goods-producing employment is down sharply since 2000, despite President Trump’s promises to support such job creation. Corporations such as GM have shifted stateside production to the Global South. Consequently, stateside labor union factory jobs have declined. Meanwhile, the UAW has agreed to lower wages for entry-level workers, a main cause of the labor union strike against the company at the end of 2019.

Headquarters for corporations such as Apple Inc. are in the Global North. The iconic company contracts out its assembly work to firms based in the Global South. Author Intan Suwandi calls this “arm’s length contracts” in “Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism” (Monthly Review Press, 2019).

Back in the US, the so-called race to the bottom of wage income insufficient to pay one’s bills is worsening. For example, rising rents eat up workers’ paychecks. Homelessness and poverty grows. Having a job is no guarantee of being able to buy the necessities of life.

Historically, a low unemployment rate can spur higher wage growth. In that scenario, some employers raise starting pay to attract new employees. This has not been the case recently, though.

Young workers entering the labor force, so-called millennials, are on the front line of an economy that grows low-quality jobs. Restaurant employment with week-to-week scheduling of hours is a case in point.

This employment trend is an outcome of economic restructuring that precedes the Great Recession. An employer class has been able to weaken labor rights by moving production offshore and making labor union organizing tough in the US. The employment available to American workers is proof of that.

For more information on the JQI, visit https://www.jobqualityindex.com/

Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2020

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