I agree with the underlying sympathies behind Amanda Cage, Maureen Conway, Jeannine Laprad, and Sarah Miller’s post at The Hill:
The reality is that about half of America’s working population earns less than a living wage. It is past time to update federal policy and support all of our workforce in a way that matches its skills, talents and contributions to America’s success.
In the rebuilding year ahead, Americans need and deserve better jobs. Expanding the number of good jobs, and improving the quality of existing ones, must be an essential goal of the Biden administration.
Too little attention has been paid to the deteriorating wages and working conditions that have eroded economic stability and opportunity for a growing number of Americans. Some view low-wage jobs as an important entry point into the labor market, and one that enables hard-working people to advance quickly.
The research is clear. The size of the low-wage workforce and limited mobility in the labor market means that relatively few people are upwardly mobile.
While there is no single, comprehensive definition of a “good†job, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, the Aspen Institute, Gallup, the Urban Institute, and others have defined job quality not just based on pay and benefits, but also on working conditions, workplace culture, job design, supportive work environments, skill development and career advancement.
Improving job quality requires employers, social sector leaders, worker organizations and many others to step up to the plate.
I think they’re missing something. The number of jobs and the pay offered for those jobs are dictated by supply and demand. Laws, regulations, and agitation function more by limiting the number of jobs that pay low wages, don’t carry benefits, and require working in poor conditions than they do by fostering the creation of good jobs.
I agree that we aren’t producing good jobs to the degree that we should but I think that has several major reasons:
- Too slack a labor market
- Replacement of good jobs with bad jobs due to the slack labor market
- Globalization
- Excessive financialization of the economy
- Inadequate capital investment
- Increasingly high requirements to get a good job
- Deadweight loss of government regulation
not necessarily in that order. Unless those are addressed nothing the authors are proposing will do much to change the status quo.
