Good jobs in the U.S. declining

A report released this week finds that good jobs - jobs that pay at least $17 an hour and provide health insurance and a pension -- declined by 3.5 million between 2000 and 2006, according to the new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Key to the decline was the erosion of employer-provided health insurance (down 3.1%) and employer-sponsored pension and retirement-savings plans (down 4.9%). The research defined a good job as one that pays $17 an hour, or $34,000 annually, has employer-provided health care and offers a pension. The $17 per hour figure is equal to the inflation-adjusted earnings of the typical male worker in 1979, the first year of data analyzed in the report. Over the 2000s, the share of women in good jobs declined 0.2 percentage points, undermining small gains made in the 1980s and 1990s. For men, the picture was worse, with a 4.4 percentage-point decline in the share of good jobs, compared to a 1.9 percentage-point decline in the 1990s and a 3.4 percentage-point drop in the 1980s. To read the full report, please visit: http://www.cepr.net/content/view/1352/8/