Jobs - just not well paying jobs

From Felix Salmon at Reuters.com:

America is creating jobs — but they’re not well-paid jobs, and they don’t seem to be going to the previously unemployed.

Today’s headline figure is certainly impressive: 195,000 new jobs were created in June, in the wake of a super-strong 207,000 new jobs in May. But the headline unemployment rate went nowhere, stuck at 7.6%, while the broadest measure of underemployment, the U6 unemployment rate, saw a worrying and substantial rise, to 14.3% from 13.8%.

Good jobs, like those in government, continue to get cut, while most of the jobs growth came in the most low-wage sectors, like hospitality. And while the data on wages was pretty healthy, remember that wage data applies overwhelmingly to people who have been employed for some time, rather than to people newly entering the workforce. 

Basically, if you’re employed, you’re doing OK, but if you’re underemployed, the options available to you — the new jobs being created — are pretty underwhelming. Partly as a result, the number of discouraged workers — people who have given up looking for work because they can find nothing available — has gone up, sharply, to more than 1 million....
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Link: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/07/05/when-the-government-outsources-employment-policy/