US labour force polarisation - skills, education and sex
"Americans at the top and bottom of the income scale are benefiting most from the jobs recovery while those in the middle are getting left behind.
Employees making above-average wages, like doctors and energy-industry workers, and those at the other extreme, including home-health aides and restaurant staff, have seen outsized gains in hiring since the jobs recovery began in February 2010, say economists at Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Professions in the middle, such as financial services and specialty construction, aren’t faring as well....
...The highest-paying jobs, which employ about 15 percent of all workers, have accounted for 20 percent of the gains in employment since February 2010, when the jobs recovery began, Wells Fargo calculations show. Those whose average earnings are lower than 60 percent of all employees have accounted for about 46 percent of job growth in the same period.
Middle-income occupations, which employ about 40 percent of all workers, have created about 34 percent of jobs since February 2010, Wells Fargo found.
Measures of household sentiment reflect the composition of job gains. Confidence among those making more than $100,000 a year and for those with annual incomes between $15,000 and $25,000 has improved more in the past six months than for families making from $25,000 to $50,000, figures from the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index showed last month. ...“What are getting squeezed are the well-paying jobs with lower-skill levels that used to give a middle-class income.” ..."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/mid-income-earners-suffer-in-polarized-u-s-job-market-economy.html
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"...The U.S. workplace is polarizing between the education haves and have-nots, says David Autor, professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. So-called middle-skill jobs, typically well-paying work that doesn’t require extensive higher education, are vanishing, dividing the labor force into high- and low-skill positions. While women are moving up the knowledge ladder, male educational attainment is growing at a slower rate....
...The share of women who completed high school was three percentage points higher than men in 2010, compared with a three point lead by men in 1975, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The percentage of women who obtained a bachelor’s degree was eight points higher than men in 2010, compared with a six-point lead by men in 1975....
...Economists don’t understand why men wouldn’t seize the chance of education when the financial premium is so high. The median full-year wage for men 25-to-34 years old with a bachelor’s degree was $51,000 in 2009 compared with just $32,900 for those with a high school diploma, according to data tracked by education-statistics center. ...
...Unemployment rates for men peaked at 11.2 percent in October 2009 versus a peak of 9 percent for women in November 2010. For men and women with a high school diploma and no college, the jobless rate stood at 8.8 percent in March versus 4.1 percent for workers with a bachelor’s degree and higher. Male employment is snapping back at a faster pace in the economic recovery, accounting for 88 percent of the 2.3 million increase in nonfarm payrolls, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ..."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/unemployment-falls-fast-in-u-s-if-men-get-college-degrees-jobs.html
Employees making above-average wages, like doctors and energy-industry workers, and those at the other extreme, including home-health aides and restaurant staff, have seen outsized gains in hiring since the jobs recovery began in February 2010, say economists at Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Professions in the middle, such as financial services and specialty construction, aren’t faring as well....
...The highest-paying jobs, which employ about 15 percent of all workers, have accounted for 20 percent of the gains in employment since February 2010, when the jobs recovery began, Wells Fargo calculations show. Those whose average earnings are lower than 60 percent of all employees have accounted for about 46 percent of job growth in the same period.
Middle-income occupations, which employ about 40 percent of all workers, have created about 34 percent of jobs since February 2010, Wells Fargo found.
Measures of household sentiment reflect the composition of job gains. Confidence among those making more than $100,000 a year and for those with annual incomes between $15,000 and $25,000 has improved more in the past six months than for families making from $25,000 to $50,000, figures from the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index showed last month. ...“What are getting squeezed are the well-paying jobs with lower-skill levels that used to give a middle-class income.” ..."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/mid-income-earners-suffer-in-polarized-u-s-job-market-economy.html
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"...The U.S. workplace is polarizing between the education haves and have-nots, says David Autor, professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. So-called middle-skill jobs, typically well-paying work that doesn’t require extensive higher education, are vanishing, dividing the labor force into high- and low-skill positions. While women are moving up the knowledge ladder, male educational attainment is growing at a slower rate....
...The share of women who completed high school was three percentage points higher than men in 2010, compared with a three point lead by men in 1975, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The percentage of women who obtained a bachelor’s degree was eight points higher than men in 2010, compared with a six-point lead by men in 1975....
...Economists don’t understand why men wouldn’t seize the chance of education when the financial premium is so high. The median full-year wage for men 25-to-34 years old with a bachelor’s degree was $51,000 in 2009 compared with just $32,900 for those with a high school diploma, according to data tracked by education-statistics center. ...
...Unemployment rates for men peaked at 11.2 percent in October 2009 versus a peak of 9 percent for women in November 2010. For men and women with a high school diploma and no college, the jobless rate stood at 8.8 percent in March versus 4.1 percent for workers with a bachelor’s degree and higher. Male employment is snapping back at a faster pace in the economic recovery, accounting for 88 percent of the 2.3 million increase in nonfarm payrolls, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ..."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/unemployment-falls-fast-in-u-s-if-men-get-college-degrees-jobs.html