Economy adds more jobs, but are they good jobs?

Job-seekers at a career fair in Chicago last month. (Bloomberg / January 25, 2012)

By John Corrigan

February 3, 2012, 12:17 p.m.

Wall Street cheered the latest jobs report Friday, sending all the major stock indexes sharply higher after the government reported that the economy added a much better-than-expected 243,000 new jobs.

But new jobs alone won’t get the economy back in gear, according to Madeline Janis, the executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. The nation needs not just new jobs, she says, but good jobs.

“Wages are going down, down, down, and most of the new jobs that are being created now since the recession are much lower wage than before,” Janis said in a meeting with The Times' editorial board earlier this week. “People can’t survive.”

Janis contends that policymakers must step up efforts to ensure there are economic opportunities for returning military veterans, as well as those on the margins of society. As the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan, she points out, more veterans will be joining the ranks of job-seekers.

“It’s going to take a lot more work than just creating jobs,” Janis said. “It’s creating a lot of jobs, and then creating the pathway in, the pipeline, the training and all of those things for people like returning vets, or people coming out of the criminal justice system.

“It’s a tragedy,” she added. “We have people coming out, massive numbers of people -- mostly African American men -- coming out of the criminal justice system, and they cannot get a job. We cannot just say 'Tough, tough.' ”

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Comments (21)

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mrbiker at 2:06 PM February 04, 2012

Seems to me there's a simple solution to America's sagging economy. Tariffs.

How can we compete at even $8.00 per hour when China and India and all those other Asian countries pay their people $2.00 per day?

So it costs $65.00 more to make an iPhone here? Let's add a tariff to the phone and get it close enough that it would be cheaper to build it here.

Of course, we'll have the nut-jobs screaming that the government shouldn't get involved and we should keep on allowing our jobs and our resources (natural and otherwise) to be shipped overseas so the greedy corporate bastards can keep getting their billion dollar a year bonuses in the name of free enterprise.

Once we implement the tariffs, we can use the money to offer incentives to build plants and improve industrial technology, surpassing the stuff the Asians have now.

Once that happens, we'll need job training centers and all the things that go with it - office supplies, computers, peripherals, etc.

Then suddenly, our workers would be making a living wage, buying houses, cars, fun stuff, etc. putting even more American people to work.

We'd be booming again.

But that will never happen until we get the money out of elections and put a hard clamp on the door that allows politicians to take money from corporations to make laws that give incentives to off-shore our economy while collecting zillions in bonuses every year.

edkrunk at 11:48 AM February 04, 2012

Soooo, whoever thumbed down my comment (which is fine)...what is the solution then? What, everyone get $20+/hr. jobs for the rest of their lives? How's that supposed to happen? Should we start wars so that we can spur the aerospace industry? Aerospace workers make liveable wages. Should we find a cure for cancer, or least be on that never ending quest? You guys are smart enough to get into in medical school and work side by side with the greatest researchers? Can you engineer fuels to replace fossil based ones, which'll eventually be depleted in the next few decades? You guys got chemical engineering BS degrees under your belts? So what_da_F is your special skill, knowledge, background, talent etc. that can serve pragmatic needs?

What, you're too good for lowly jobs? If you can't eat steak, but someone offers you bologna, you'd rather starve? If you can't drive a Porsche Panamera, you'd rather walk?....

Give me the practical solution; I'd like to read it.

AlbertAlDiroDiroberto at 8:57 AM February 04, 2012

Wall street knife catchers again, buy into the bogus reports filled with lightweight part-time retail/service jobs. How about some facts? Remember the 70s? When the Vietnam war ended, all those returning GI's got their old jobs back by bumping out the employee in their job, creating massive unemployment. That recession became the worst since 1929. Now, we are passing that record and are entering into the next phase of the Greatest Recession with the ending of the Iraq war. The 'dominos' will continue to fall; decent payng jobs w/health care, home prices, increased foreclosures and bankruptcy for homeowners, commercial business, cities, states and countries. Look around your area. Do you see anyone moving a big box business into those vacant malls/retail/industrial centers? Estimates range to over 17 million homes vacant in America today! Meanwhile the banksters (with their bailout billion$) are standing pat with their growing shadow inventory, so as not to crash the housing prices further (they hope). The answer to fix this problem is for the Fed's to step in and 'reset' all home value's appraised and sold since 2000 to a 2000 value baseline & rewrite the mortgage. 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing!

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