Must be a News and World information Blackout in BG!
Must be a News and World information Blackout in BG!
I dont have the time to get into how bad things are for more and more Americans these days and how great it was 30 -40 years ago but this article mentions a few. U are obviously one of the fat cats that got lucky as am i but that doesnt excuse u from being stupid. But unfortunately "Ya Cant Fix Stupid!" Dont take it personal that I called u Stupid... I call my Right Wing Bible Thumping Born Again Relatives stupid too as I do Mr. Bush.......His case however there is no arguement.
Many Entry-Level Workers Feel Pinch of Rough Market
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: September 4, 2006
This Labor Day, the 45 million young people in the nation?s work force face a choppy job market in which entry-level wages have often trailed inflation, making it hard for many to cope with high housing costs and rising college debt loads.
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Marie-Susanne Langille for The New York Times
?A few people I work with are living at home with their parents; some are even on food stamps. I was hoping to buy a house this year, but there?s just no way I can swing it.? JOHN ARNOLD, 28-year-old Caterpillar factory worker
Entry-level wages for college and high school graduates fell by more than 4 percent from 2001 to 2005, after factoring in inflation, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute. In addition, the percentage of college graduates receiving health and pension benefits in their entry-level jobs has dropped sharply.
Some labor experts say wage stagnation and the sharp increase in housing costs over the past decade have delayed workers ages 20 to 35 from buying their first homes.
?People are getting married later, they?re having children later, and they?re buying houses later,? said Cecilia E. Rouse, an economist at Princeton University and a co-editor of a forthcoming book on the economics of early adulthood. ?There?s been a lengthening of the transition to adulthood, and it is very possible that what has happened in the economy is leading to some of these changes.?
Census Bureau data released last week underlined the difficulties for young workers, showing that median income for families with at least one parent age 25 to 34 fell $3,009 from 2000 to 2005, sliding to $48,405, a 5.9 percent drop, after having jumped 12 percent in the late 1990?s.
Worsening the financial crunch, far more college graduates are borrowing to pay for their education, and the amount borrowed has jumped by more than 50 percent in recent years, largely because of soaring tuition.
In 2004, 50 percent of graduating seniors borrowed some money for college, with their debt load averaging $19,000, Dr. Rouse said. That was a sharp increase from 1993, when 35 percent of seniors borrowed for college and their debt averaged $12,500, in today?s dollars.
Even though the economy has grown strongly in recent years, wages for young workers, especially college graduates, have been depressed by several factors, including the end of the high-tech boom and the trend of sending jobs overseas. From 2001 to 2005, entry-level wages for male college graduates fell by 7.3 percent, to $19.72 an hour, while wages for female graduates declined 3.5 percent, to $17.08, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group.
?In a weak labor market, younger workers do the worst,? said Lawrence Mishel, the institute?s president. ?Young workers are on the cutting edge of experiencing all the changes in the economy.?
Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, said plenty of slack remained in the job market for young workers.
The percentage of young adults who are working has dropped since 2000 largely because many have grown discouraged and stopped looking for work. This has happened even though the unemployment rate, which counts only people looking for work, has fallen to 4.4 percent for those ages 25 to 34. It is 8.2 percent for workers ages 20 to 24.
?Any way you slice the data, the labor market has been pretty weak the past five years,? Dr. Katz said. ?But hotshot young people coming out of top universities have done fine, just like top-notch executives have.?
In a steep drop over a short time, 64 percent of college graduates received health coverage in entry-level jobs in 2005, down from 71 percent five years earlier. As employers grapple with fast-rising health costs, many companies have reduced health coverage, with those cutbacks sharpest among young workers.
Partly because of the decline in manufacturing jobs that were a ticket to middle-class life, just one-third of workers with high school diplomas receive health coverage in entry-level jobs, down from two-thirds in 1979.
After an extensive job search, Katey Rich, who graduated from Wesleyan University in June, landed a part-time, $14-an-hour job in Manhattan as an editorial assistant at Film Journal International. With one-bedroom apartments often renting for $2,000 a month, Ms. Rich is looking to share an apartment but is staying with a friend?s parents for now. And while she is excited about her new job, she said she was concerned that it did not come with health insurance.
?I?ll have to fend for myself,? said Ms. Rich, who is from Aiken, S.C. ?I have parents who will back me up if things get really rough.?
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody?s Economy.com, said it was surprising how deeply young workers were going into debt to maintain the living standards they want.
nation?s personal savings sank below zero last year for the first time since the Depression, meaning Americans spent more than they earned. But for households under 35, the saving rate has plunged to minus 16 percent, which means they are spending 16 percent more than they are earning.
?The post-boomer generation feels very cavalier about saving,? Mr. Zandi said. ?They?ve been very aggressively dis-saving and have borrowed significantly.?
John Arnold, 28, a materials-handling specialist at a Caterpillar factory in Morton, Ill., said he was having a hard time making ends meet. At his factory, Caterpillar has pressured the union to accept a two-tier contract in which newer workers like him will earn a maximum of $13.26 an hour ? $27,000 a year for a full-time worker ? no matter how long they work. For longtime Caterpillar workers in the upper tier, the wage ceiling is often $20 or more an hour.
?A few people I work with are living at home with their parents; some are even on food stamps,? said Mr. Arnold, a Caterpillar worker for seven years. ?I was hoping to buy a house this year, but there?s just no way I can swing it.? With just a high school diploma, he said it was hard to find jobs that paid more.
For men with high school diplomas, entry-level pay fell by 3.3 percent, to $10.93, from 2001 to 2005, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For female high school graduates, entry-level pay fell by 4.9 percent, to $9.08 an hour.
Labor Department officials voiced optimism for young workers, noting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had projected that 18.9 million net new jobs would be created by 2014.
?The future is bright for young people because the opportunities are out there,? said Mason Bishop, deputy assistant labor secretary for employment and training. ?We want to help them get access to the postsecondary education that enables them to take advantage of the opportunities.?
The wage gap between college-educated and high-school-educated workers has widened greatly, with college graduates earning 45 percent more than high school graduates, up from 23 percent in 1979.
Professor Rouse of Princeton said a college degree added $402,000 to a graduate?s lifetime earnings.
Alex Shayevsky, who graduated from New York University last year, said majoring in business had paid off. Mr. Shayevsky got a job in the bond department of a major investment bank in New York. He earns $65,000, not including a bonus that could be at least half his salary.
?Getting my degree was very valuable,? said Mr. Shayevsky, a 23-year-old from Buffalo Grove, Ill.
Martin Regalia, chief economist for the United States Chamber of Commerce, said young workers would be helped greatly if strong economic growth continued and the labor market tightened further, as happened in the late 1990?s.
Sheldon H. Danziger, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, sees a bifurcated labor market for young workers.
?You?re much better off as a young worker today if you?re the child of the well-to-do and you get a good education,? Professor Danziger said, ?and you?re much worse off if you?re a child of a blue-collar worker and you don?t go to college. There?s increasing inequality among young people just as there is increasing inequality among their parents.?
