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In today’s (Sunday, April 24) Washington Post, Annie Lowrey mentions that maybe the economy might just not be in such great shape if the best jobs news is McDonald’s trumpeting their McJobs Fair this past Tuesday where they were looking to hire 50k workers in one day. For what it’s worth, I’m fairly certain that McDonalds goes through a hiring exercise of this nature most every spring; they just consolidated it all to one day this year and apparently received the hoped for public relations splash.
I actually took a look at the McJobs Fair situation almost three weeks ago when the news first came out of the “big” hiring push by Mickey Ds, so it’s nice of the Post and Ms Lowrey to catch up to the blogosphere. Yet for every point Ms Lowrey gets correct, she still winds up missing the point in the end.
Indeed, the McHiringSpree raises the question: What kind of jobs has the recovery ginned up? The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers a host of month-by-month information on who is working where, for how much and for how long. The data show that a few industries are at or above their level of employment before the recession. The federal workforce is slightly bigger, once you factor out job losses at the Postal Service and ignore Census hiring. Employment is up in some niches, like computer systems design. And health care remains the nation’s strongest growth industry, with tons of new jobs for workers like home health aides and physicians’ office workers.…snip…
Despite the gains, though, it all adds up to a fairly bleak picture: The jobs we’re adding, for the most part, aren’t great ones. The National Employment Law Project took a closer look at employment and jobs-growth data in February. It says that just 14 percent of recent job growth comes from high-wage industries. About half comes from low-wage industries. Restaurants and food services businesses, “especially” fast-food outlets, made up 7 percent. The picture contributes to a larger story: The country has produced far too few stable, middle-income jobs over the past 20 years, not just the past three.
Given the deficit hysteria and drive for budget cuts, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for that “federal workforce” gain to remain for very long. And only “14 percent of recent job growth comes from high-wage industries” means 86% of the jobs are not in high-wage industries. Growth industries of “home health aides and physicians’ office workers” are also not particularly well paying by anyone’s imagination. I can pretty much guarantee you that the growth in health care costs have not been driven by these types of jobs. Minimum wage or just above minimum wage jobs are not enough to build a long term, sustainable recovery that revitalizes the middle-class.
Those are the points about the recovery that Ms Lowrey mostly gets correct. It is her final point though where she goes careening off the rails:
For now, the economy will take any jobs it can get. Besides, those McJobs might be nothing to mock. Several McDonald’s executives started behind the counter. A low-paying job need not stay a low-paying job forever. And a low-paying job is decidedly better than none at all.
Yes Ms Lowrey, “a low-paying job is decidedly better than none at all” but shouldn’t we as a nation and economy aspire to something a bit more? Seriously, how many people do you think can actually stay with a McDonalds long enough to become an executive after starting “behind the counter?” One percent? Two percent? While I imagine there are some children around who go and tell their parents, “Mommy and Daddy, I want to run a McDonalds when I grow up,” I rather doubt that this is the best path to the middle class for anyone.
And because I can:
Cross posted from Just A Small Town Country Boy
26 Comments
Obviously it became obvious to WAPO how obvious the blatantly obvious is to the rest of the world, and they decided that it obviously wasn’t a good idea to continue being so obviously dense? Or something? ;-)
When I was 12 I used to get up at 4am every day to deliver about 100 of their papers. Now I wouldn’t get up even to buy one.
Marley is Awesome!
Let’s see now, most people would have to drive to work and that would entail auto insurance which is outofsight! Oh, and don’t forget that gas and how it is rising on a daily basis. So after you’ve paid for your transportation to work you have no income left to buy food, pay a mortgage or rent, electric/gas, phone, food, or clothing. Kids? Oh heck, let’s not even think about them. They are only important when they are in the womb. After that, they are on their own!
$7.25 for 4 hours a day and then take out your state and federal taxes, you have nothing left. Seriously! I guess they want America to turn into the third world country where people are living in cardboard lean to’s and eating out of the dumps.
I’m sure this is why Bush and his merry crew of advisors decided to rename the American economic plan the Service Industry plan. Why else would they reclassify burger joints as a Manufacturing Industry?
Well, look on the bright side. If this keeps up eventually they’ll be able to charge people money to have a job, the economy will be booming again, their cash flow will increase so much they’ll be able to create even more jobs, and if they can get a mandate out of Congress that everyone has to have a job ( something like the HCR mandate, you know? ) we’ll have full employment. ;-)
What Lowrey patently fails to realize is that a McJobs recovery is exactly what her employers and the moneyed elite of this country want. This certainly isn’t news to them.
Touting McDonald’s hiring of 50,000 minimum wage kitchen and wait staff jobs (1000 per state, say ten per city and town) as the best hiring news in America is like substituting powdered coffee creemer for breast milk.
Given the articles I was seeing at various news sites, IIRC the Boston Globe was saying 2200 jobs in MA, the Hartford Courant had it as1200 or so in CT, etc
By my math, it was working out to be 3 to 4 employees per McDonalds location.
It really was and is strictly a PR move to pump up something they do each spring and nothing more
You can bet they’re not hiring people over 30.
“you have no income left to buy food”
Don’t be such a Gloomy Gus: McDonalds gives their employees a discount on grease burgers.
The ‘recovery’ is a lie.
The media just keeps spinning tall tales.
Earlier today, I was listening to NPR morning edition. You know what they were blaming the bad economic data on? The weather. I kid you not.
Our elite are have their very own ‘let them eat PR sound bytes’ moment.
I hope you’ve gone to the WaPoo site and commented on Ms. Lowrey’s article — if, indeed she has the courage to have the comments “on.”
Mostly [like the Moustache of Pomposity over at the NYT] the cowards block comments.
Actually I didn’t even bother to check the comments today. But usually, they seem to be populated by varying levels of idiot
BTW, dakine01,
You are getting to be a regular front pager today*g*
Thanks for the eggcellent work. (My 7 year old made me type that)
I was hiding 24 easter eggs this morning at 5 AM.
WaPo gets it wrong again. The overwhelming majority of the unemployed in this time are middle aged professionals. People offering “McJobs” don’t hire such workers. I know. I’ve been applying.
“Minimum wage or just above minimum wage jobs are not enough to build a long term, sustainable recovery that revitalizes the middle-class.”
which is what they want.
they want us desperate. check.
they want us so desperate we will follow ANY orders. check.
they want us to accept any crumbs they discard. check.
they want us to feel alone. disconnected from our fellow humans.
they want a society that cannibalizes its own.
they want people embarrassed. they want us to feel hopelessness.
check and mate.
I went over and looked, and comments are open, but judging from the ones posted, it’s no wonder they block the comments. They’re awful
“Minimum wage or just above minimum wage jobs are not enough to build a long term, sustainable recovery that revitalizes the middle-class.”
“Yes Ms Lowrey, ‘a low-paying job is decidedly better than none at all’ but shouldn’t we as a nation and economy aspire to something a bit more?”
The middle class is dead, and the available low paying jobs will become even more lower-paying in the future. Let’s get real: when the representatives of several states are trying to repeal child-labor laws, you’ve gotta realize that these McHirers are trying to establish new-norm LOWS, not build expections of the future return of old-norm HIGHS.
And I will be fighting them and drawing attention to the issue as long as I can.
(as I’m seeing it only–not a forecast)
And though it’s mostly retirement nest eggs’ earning power and the
income from equity of those who made good decisions that
are being transferred to the actors behind what was in effect
a mortgage Ponzi scheme that also took down Iceland long ago
and siphoned off Japan’s recovery in the process, it’s really EVERYONE’S savings being so marshaled.
That’s going on 3 years’ worth.
The Fed, having done this, is seemingly hard pressed to
find a way out as rising interest rates will be oppressive.
It’s rendering extending long term credit a daring sport.
And their fellow cronies want your nest eggs privatized so that
can do this all the time with your money from the moment you’re
born, and they want medical service accounts for the same
reason even though it will give you an incentive to
NOT see a doctor, which is stupid-looking, even to an
idiot, let alone clinically speaking.
That’s not at all to say an alternative need be without incentives
for efficiency and scientific growth.
http://sites.google.com/site/evernewecon
(for Tambershall, above)
Thank you. Direct, accurate, eloquent.
I would only add:
They want you to chuck equality in favor of their
arrogance and ego issues, plus your basic guaranteed
rights and your simple right to happiness
by birthright (though you ARE supposed to require
they be respected even if they don’t like you.)
The seriously nasty abuse of the middle class has been particularly large and in process since George W. Bush’s first State of the
Union message, and I haven’t noticed much of anything under
Mr. Obama’s watch that has thus far changed that, so I’m at a loss as to how to fix the damage (actually the damage is still being
inflicted rapidly) except by way of windfall profits taxes
and throwing light on improper influence.
http://sites.google.com/site/evernewecon
I remember when the 1st Mcdonalds opened 20 yrs. ago in Red Sq. and the MSM made such a BIG deal about it. Now things have come full circle haven’t they? As the Russian saying goes. ” The Communists lied to us about what Communism was about, but they told us the truth about Capitalism.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vhrIOT2YxM&feature=feedf
The governor of the state of Florida has redefined the term poor for the state of Florida. That new definition will impact who gets health care and what services are provided to them.
the Heritage Foundation has owned livingwage.com since the start of the internet. They used to openly associate themselves with the HF but not it is obscured.
the web site spends pages demanding that we must have low minimum wages because minimum wage jobs are for kids and minorities seeking to get started in the job world. They argue that to force employers to pay actual living jobs were hurt young blank men.
This is a lie. If a job does not pay a living wage it should not be considered gainful employment but rather some kind of intermediary step. People can live on a minimum wage , they must be supported by a spouse or parent or government program.
So with this in mind, we should demand that jobs that do not pay minimum wage are defined in some other way from full time grown up employment. With this designation, we can ask why so many companies refuse to provide REAL jobs for people trying to support families. Because it is families and children that these McJobs are systematically destroying.
Excellent post and recc’d. So. Even when the M$M deigns to notice the TYPES of jobs being created in addition to the abysmally low numbers, their attitude is “Well, it’s better than nothing, so quit your bitching.”
Is it better than nothing? Really? Maybe by offering false hope it’s actually worse.
Seems to me our PTB want to turn America into an old-fashioned banana republic with the very few haves at the top and the rest of us groveling for crumbs at the bottom. And they are well on their way.
They may even succeed. I doubt it, though. Chances are our entire casino economy may collapse before that happens. Or maybe even the American people will put a stop to it on their own. Hard to say.
Well, obviously.
You’re not kidding! I had a job that I knew was costing a lot to get to and from. I didn’t know how much until it ended and I had more money on considerably less unemployment. And that was when gas was below $3.00/gal. Now? Forget it, wouldn’t pay enough to cover my (frugal) monthly expenses.