For those on the economic ladder's lowest
rungs, the middle rungs have almost completely disappeared.
Ashley Brown wants to be a bank teller. When I met her this past
spring, the 26-year old single mother was cold-calling banks and credit unions,
looking for one that might hire her. So far, she'd had one interview and a lot
of unfriendly brush-offs. No offers.
Brown is one of those Americans whom Mitt Romney has dismissed as part of the 47 percent of us who are
"dependent upon government" and therefore not worthy of his concern.
I met her in Sacramento, California at a program called Job Club, which aims to help people on welfare find
work.
Brown worked in a warehouse before being laid off, and while she
was pregnant she attended business college to get a certificate in medical
billing and coding. But warehouse work had taken its toll on her tiny frame,
and she'd had no luck finding work in a medical office. And so she spent her
days like so many others, looking for jobs that didn't seem to exist in a city
where unemployment hovers at 13 percent. "If I could just get my foot in
the door," she sighed.
Times are tough for everyone. Most
Americans have felt the impact of the Great Recession — although not, perhaps,
Romney and his wealthy donors. But for those on the economic ladder's lowest
rungs, times have been hard for much longer. And they're more likely to stay
hard.
Recent studies have documented the polarization of the job
market into what one team of economists has termed "lovely" and
"lousy" jobs. The lovely jobs are highly paid and highly skilled. The
lousy ones are dreary, menial, and low-paying. The jobs that are disappearing
most rapidly from the labor market are the ones in the middle, the ones that
were once the foundation of working class life.
These are the jobs that people like Ashley Brown aspire to —
jobs like bank teller, cashier, shipping clerk, and machine operator. A recent
study by economists Nir Jaimovich and Henry E. Siu found that in the last three
recessions, job losses were concentrated among these easily automated
middle-skill jobs. After the recession was over, those jobs never returned.
That means the jobs that are available to people without much
experience or education are increasingly menial, transitory, and scarce. In the
seven weeks I spent at Job Club, I watched people patiently work their way
through ridiculously complex application procedures for jobs like hotel
chambermaid, warehouse worker, and home health care aide. Yet even these jobs
were usually out of reach. Those who did find work tended to get jobs that were
temporary, part-time, or on commission. One guy got a job distributing flyers
door to door. Someone else took a job with a collection agency. Two others were
going door to door selling vacuum cleaners.
The people who got those jobs were happy to get them. They don't
need Mitt Romney to tell them that a steady paycheck is better than trying to
make ends meet on a welfare check that's too small to cover the rent. But
before we chastise people for being dependent on government, we have to make
sure they have an alternative. That means that the people who call themselves
"job creators" have to actually create jobs.
Dashka Slater is an Economic
Hardship Reporting Project contributor.
Distributed via OtherWords (OtherWords.org)
Distributed via OtherWords (OtherWords.org)
