The devalued American worker

More on the difficulty for millions of Americans who want to stay in the middle class.

This story from the Washington Post focuses on a man named Ed Green.

Ed is worth knowing.

At the end of the excerpt is a link to read about Ed Green.  PB
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From the Washington Post online:

Today, a shrinking share of Americans are working middle-class jobs, and collectively, they earn less of the nation’s income than they used to...

For that, you can blame the past three recessions, which sparked a chain reaction of layoffs and lower pay.

Millions of American jobs disappeared during the 1990, 2001 and 2008 recessions.

That’s what happens in recessions.

But for decades after World War II, lost jobs came back when the economy picked up again. These times, they didn’t.

And it was a particular sort of job that disappeared permanently in those downturns:

Economists call those jobs “middle-skill” jobs.

They include a lot of factory work — the country is down about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since 1990, according to the Labor Department — but also a lot of clerical and sales tasks that can be handled easily from a country where workers make a fraction of what they make here...
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Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2014/12/14/the-devalued-american-worker/