...and the Desertion of Non-College White Men From the Democratic Party
Friday, November 2, 2012
robertreich.org
Friday, November 2, 2012
robertreich.org
The two most important
trends, confirmed in Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, are that (1) jobs slowly continue to return, and (2) those
jobs are paying less and less.
Today’s report showed 171,000 workers were added to
payrolls in October, up from 148,000 in September. At the same time,
unemployment rose to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent last month. The reason
for the seeming disparity: As jobs have begun to return, more people
have been entering the labor force seeking employment. The household
survey, on which the unemployment percentage is based, counts as
“unemployed” only people who are looking for work.
As I’ve said, you have to take a single month’s
report with a grain of salt because the job reports bounce around a
great deal, and are often revised. Last month the BLS announced that
114,000 new jobs were created in September. Today the BLS revised that
September figure upward to 148,000.
Overall, the jobs trend is in the right direction. The President and Democrats can take some comfort.
The most disturbing aspect of today’s report is the
continuing decline of wages. Average hourly earnings climbed 1.6
percent in October from the same time last year. That’s not enough to
match the rate of inflation – meaning that hourly earnings continue to
drop in real terms.
It’s also the smallest gain since comparable
year-over-year records began in 2007, before the Great Recession.
Earnings for production workers – about 80 percent of the workforce —
rose only 1.1 percent in the 12 months to October. That’s way behind
inflation, and the weakest wage growth since the BLS began keeping
records on wages in 1965.
The biggest challenge ahead isn’t just to get jobs back. They’re coming back. It’s to raise the wages of most Americans.
This isn’t a new challenge. The median wage has
been flat for three decades, when you adjust for inflation. Since 2000
it’s been dropping.
What does all of this have to do with the upcoming
election? Plenty. Some of the biggest wage losses over the last several
decades have been among white men who haven’t attended college. And, not
coincidentally, they’re the ones who have been abandoning the Democrats
in droves.
Three decades ago, non-college white men were
solidly Democratic. Many of them were unionized. They had jobs that
delivered good middle-class incomes.
But over the last three decades they stopped believing the Democratic Party could deliver good jobs at decent wages.
Republicans have done no better for them on the
wages — in fact many policies touted by the GOP, such as its attack on
unions, have accelerated the downward wage trend.
But Republicans have offered white non-college
males the scapegoats of racism and immigration — blaming, directly or
indirectly, blacks and Latinos — and the solace of right-wing
evangelical Christianity. Absent any bold leadership from Democrats,
these have been enough.
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