More and more Americans are getting the feeling that the US has stagnated in recent decades. From low wages to rising prices to deteriorating health, Americans’ standard of living seems to have declined. And more and more statistical data is backing up that feeling that so many Americans have.
The US economy used to be the envy of the world, with rags-to-riches stories enticing many an immigrant to come to our shores to try his luck. But with the advent of government welfare, higher taxes, and higher barriers to entry on businesses, the US economy has lost much of the entrepreneurial drive that made this country great.
While the US economy has grown over the past several decades, new data shows that nearly two-thirds of the jobs created since 1990 have been low-wage, low-hour jobs. While every economy needs people to clean bathrooms, serve meals, and engage in unskilled manual labor, the fact that 63% of all jobs created since 1990 have been low-wage means that the US economy has been deteriorating.
A truly growing economy should produce more high-paying jobs than low-paying ones, so that each additional job added adds more to the country’s gross domestic product. The fact that only 37% of jobs created since 1990 are not low-wage means that the US is falling behind other countries in manufacturing, technology, and high-value services.
Making that news even worse is the fact that increasing automation is replacing many low-wage jobs. Since high-wage job growth has been so poor, that doesn’t bode well for the future of the US labor force. Unless Americans educate themselves in order to get themselves hired for higher-wage jobs, or begin starting businesses that produce useful goods and services, we could be on the verge of a society that faces massive unemployment due to having too many people who lack the necessary skills to be able to fill high-wage jobs.
