BLS July Stats Underlines Awful Choice for Americans: Unemployment or Minimum Wage Job

For Americans hoping for a low-paying, dead end job, the July Bureau of Labor Statistics report provided much comfort. The White House, in light of its full court press to force the House to pass S. 744 or a version similar to it, tried to get the maximum mileage out of the 195,000 private sector jobs created.

 

But beneath the raw numbers are the grim facts that the new jobs are almost entirely in the service sector. According to Zero Hedge, of the 195,000 new private sector jobs alleged to have been created, 75,000 or 3 percent are in the “leisure and hospitality” category and include 52,000 new waitresses and bartenders, and an additional 19,000 jobs in “amusements gambling, and recreation.” Retail trade added 37,000 employees while wholesale trade hired 11,000. Professional and business services created 53,000 jobs,which are staffing building management services, janitors, employment services, and temporary help. Other categories that added jobs are ambulatory health care services, 13,000; financial activities, 17,000;  financial activities, 17,000 and local government, 13,000.

 

While there may be a middle management job somewhere in the July new hires, the overwhelming majority pay minimum wage, or possibly a few pennies more, but offer no employer health care packages or other benefits. Paying the family bills on wages so low would be impossible. Elsewhere in financial news released over the Independence Day weekend, the Department of Labor announced (quietly) that only 47 percent of Americans have a full-time job.

 

S. 744 would add 33 million legally authorized workers within the next decade, a callous congressional  display of indifference to American workers and the nation’s future.