This underutilization is showing up in increasing income inequality. In earlier periods, incomes of the low- and high-quality cohorts grew at roughly the same rate, however disparate their levels relative to each other. But beginning around 2003, the growth in income of the ever-smaller high-quality cohort took off and is currently still accelerating relative to incomes from lower quality jobs. Even with hourly wages in the lower-quality sectors recently showing some welcome signs of life relative to those in high-quality sectors, the increasing number of low-quality jobs with limited hours is a big drag, which shows up in our job quality index.
What led us here? Globalization and outsourcing of manufactured goods is certainly one culprit. But our decades-long curtailment of federal spending on repairing and building new domestic infrastructure, with all the well-paying construction and materials manufacturing jobs that such spending entails – certainly hasn’t helped.
Whatever the causes, they should concern us all. When workers are denied access to real full-time employment, they find themselves direly deprived even of basic security, let alone dignity.
This opinion column was provided by Bloomberg News.