The American economy is finally creating more middle-income jobs, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a turnabout from the feast-and-famine pattern earlier in the recovery, when hiring was strongest at the bottom and top of the wage scale.þþThe findings suggest that it may soon be time to retire a familiar criticism of the long but lackluster economic rebound that has been underway since the end of the Great Recession in 2009: the hollowing out of the American middle class.þþBetween 2013 and 2015, employers added nearly 2.3 million workers earning from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, primarily in fields like education, construction, transportation and social services. That was roughly 50 percent more than in either the high-wage or low-wage categories during the same period.þþBy contrast, the Fed researchers found, of the nearly 7.6 million jobs created from 2010 to 2013, only about a fifth fell into the middle-tier category, with the largest number instead coming from lower-paid sectors like food preparation and health care support.þþ“The tide has begun to turn,” said William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed. “For the first time in quite a while, we are seeing gains in middle-wage jobs actually outnumber gains in higher- and lower-wage jobs nationwide.”þþAlthough the economy has created nearly 15 million jobs since employment bottomed out in early 2010, the gains in the recovery have been noticeably uneven. While many cities along the East and West Coasts have been prolific job creators, parts of the Midwest and South have not experienced similar improvements.þþAt the same time, most American workers have made only paltry wage gains until recently, despite steady hiring that has helped bring the national unemployment rate down to 4.9 percent last month from a high of 10 percent in late 2009.þþ“It’s important, but we are coming off of a really low threshold,” said Diane Swonk, a veteran independent economist based in Chicago, referring to the new Fed study. “We’ve shifted gears, but we’re only now beginning to regain the quality in terms of jobs.”þþ“We’ve got a long way to go,” Ms. Swonk added, noting that after inflation, family incomes were still below where they were in 2000. “It’s more than a lost decade.”þþThe nascent national improvement identified by the Fed researchers in New York also held true in the metropolitan region in recent years, with New York City and surrounding suburbs adding 179,000 middle-wage jobs from 2013 to 2015, compared with just 18,000 from 2010 to 2013.þþThe shift coincided with the passing of the baton from finance to technology as the major driver in local job creation.
Source: NY Times
