Congress, raise the minimum wage. You’ll be doing it not for the proles but for your own class.
As unemployment skyrocketed during the economic downturn, job opportunities for everyone -- including college graduates -- narrowed and low-wage work began to replace steady middle-class jobs. Three-fifths of the jobs lost during the recession paid middle-income wages, while the same share of the jobs created during the recovery are low-wage work, according to an August study from the National Employment Law Project.
The result: Nearly half of the college graduates in the class of 2010 are working in jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree and 38 percent have jobs that don't even require a high school diploma, according to a January report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. The report called into question whether too much public money is being spent on providing students with degrees that make them overqualified for the only jobs that are available.
And--if it isn't too much trouble--please change some policies that are preventing the creation of 10-20 million jobs.
Reader Comments (1)
Why should they bother to raise the minimum given the NYT piece this week profiling Gates et al, re hiring engineers/scientists from outside of the US, thus discouraging college students in the US from pursuing careers in science and engineering. This was such a depressing article with wage squeeze implications that I cannot understand how this country can pretend to have national interests in anything except shareholder greed.