No Recovery For the Middle Class

This has been an uneven recovery, with the benefits accumulating to the rich and the corporate sector while regular folks have largely been left behind amid stagnant wages, rising living costs, mediocre job gains and persistent long-term unemployment.

And none of this is new. The recession merely exacerbated trends that started in the late 1970s: lost manufacturing prowess, an important source of good-paying jobs; a shift to generally lower-paid service jobs; freer global trade, which deepens these employment problems; and increased reliance on finance, credit and debt as families try to hold on to the American dream…

While Americans are working harder and are far more productive then they used to be, for a variety of reasons they are not sharing in the prosperity their work creates. This is a reversal of the situation enjoyed from the 1950s through the 1970s, when the middle class prospered amid strong demand for labor, widespread unionization and the ability to demand pay raises.

You can see this in the way median household income has badly lagged behind the per-capita share of economic output, as shown in the graphic above. Both measures are adjusted for inflation. While the available income statistics run only through 2009, it’s doubtful that they’ve improved much since…

One main problem is that since the recession ended, the economy has been creating low-quality, part-time, no-benefit positions…

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