The Economy is "Recovering" By Creating More Low-Wage Jobs...
Increasingly Filled By Graduates

From AlterNet:

Last month, the Department of Labor released new job market numbers, which suggests that the economic recovery is perpetuating the trend of college graduates turning to minimum wage jobs. Though there has been significant employment gains, many recent college graduates have been forced to resort to low-wage, low-skilled jobs. There are now 13.4 million college graduates working for hourly pay, up 19 percent since the start of the recession.  

And

In a recent study released by NELP, the National Employment Law Project, the low-wage occupational sector is the fastest growing sector in the economy, even though this sector only lost about one-fifth of its jobs. Meanwhile, the middle-wage job sector—which usually serves as the pathway into the workforce for many recent graduates—was hardest hit, and has been the slowest to recover.

More here.

Back in the 90s, when I was less liberal but no longer conservative, it occurred to me that the job advice everybody in the establishment was giving, "go to college," was bizarre and short sighted.  Imagine everybody taking that advice seriously and America ending up with its entire work force having college degrees.  You'd have essentially the same situation as before.  Some people would have good jobs, but most people would not.  And the reason for this is simple.  People going to college does not create good jobs.  Sure, in a situation with most people not going to college, a bachelor's degree will do a little something to make one stand out from the crowd, but it doesn't really do much for the work force as a whole.  So going to college might help you, an individual, maybe, but it's a sick joke to say that it will somehow improve the lives of most Americans.  It's not a solution.  It's never been a solution.

Now don't get me wrong.  I personally would totally love it if everybody went to college.  But that has nothing to do with increasing employment prospects.  Rather, college provides its own rewards, making one's own existence far richer and more interesting than a simple high school diploma could ever do.  Further, more college educated Americans makes for a wiser and more contemplative nation--if we had all been to college, it's very unlikely, for instance, that we would have bought the trumped up lies and fear mongering that led to the disastrous, bloody, and costly invasion of Iraq back in 2003.  College education simply makes life better, and I encourage everybody to go if they can.

But "college for everybody" is not going to get us all jobs that can pay the rent and bills, that can provide for our children, that will allow us to save enough for retirement.  There just aren't enough of those kinds of jobs to go around, and, increasingly, those jobs are disappearing, anyway.  Apparently, the demands of our economy are such that we need far more cashiers, restaurant servers, janitors, telemarketers, and hotel cleaning crews than positions requiring a college degree, and sending the nation to college cannot alter this math.

So the real solution is mind-numbingly obvious.  If we are to be a nation of service sector workers, which is fine by me because service work is honest and decent, we need to make those jobs pay.  If there was still such a thing as a labor movement with unions to collectively bargain with employers for fair wages and benefits, this discussion wouldn't be necessary.  But right-wing anti-labor propaganda and legislation over the decades has destroyed the labor movement and allowed the wealthy to pocket compensation that rightfully belongs to workers.  Consequently, only the government can make business pay what it owes.  And that's what the government should do.  Right now.

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