Word: waging
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...less and require fewer skills than the blue-collar occupations that have been dwindling. The result, they say, is that the number of middle-class workers is steadily shrinking. Asserts Harvard Economist Richard Freeman: "For the first time in American economic history, the shift is toward lower-wage industries...
Many of the new positions do indeed depend on the willingness of workers to accept relatively low pay. America's wage bill has risen much more slowly than those of its major competitors. In the U.S., inflation-adjusted labor costs were up 8.9% during the 1970s, in contrast with leaps of 48.7% in Western Europe and more than 50% in Japan. When increases in U.S. manufacturing wages are excluded, U.S. labor costs actually fell 2.8%. Says British Economist Stephen Marris: "Americans have priced themselves into jobs by accepting lower real wages. Europeans have...
...pick up and move to get a new job, Americans seem to be born under a wandering star. Four years ago, Bill Lehto, 27, moved to Fort Worth after losing his $7-an-hour job outside Detroit. Now working as a factory machine operator, Lehto earns an hourly wage of $7.90. "I like it here," he says. "Costs are much less, and on weekends we head out to hit the bass in the rivers and lakes. You get over your homesickness...
...whose unemployment rate continues to hover at an intolerably high 40% to 50%, about triple that of their white counterparts, have gained little from the outpouring of jobs. To raise jobless youths' chances of finding work, the Administration has submitted a controversial bill creating a teen-age minimum wage of $2.50 an hour during summertime. The measure has been bitterly attacked by unions, who fear that it would undermine the current $3.35-an-hour rate. Says AFL-CIO Chief Economist Rudy Oswald: "We believe people should be paid for their work, not for their age or for their color...
...case, far more than lower pay will be needed to create jobs for black teenagers. For example, though a recent tax credit cut the wage costs of firms that hire disadvantaged youths in the summer to just 50? an hour, few companies took advantage of it when it was introduced last year. "Employers just don't want those kids in their plants," says the Urban Institute's Bendick. Concurs a Government economist: "To attack the problem of black-youth unemployment as simply a job problem and only worry about the minimum wage is not the solution...