Last 12 months of job growth concentrated in lower-wage jobs than those lost

[Hannah Bell]

In this data brief, we draw on recent revisions to employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in order to assess job loss and job growth trends during and after the Great Recession, and compare those trends to the 2001 recession...
In the private sector, there is a striking imbalance between where the recession’s job losses occurred, and where the growth of the past 12 months was concentrated:

*Lower-wage industries constituted 23 percent of job loss, but fully 49 percent of recent growth
*Mid-wage industries constituted 36 percent of job loss, and 37 percent of recent growth
*Higher-wage industries constituted 40 percent of job loss, but only 14 percent of recent growth

The current recovery looks worse than the “jobless” recovery of the 2001 recession, on several fronts:

*After a year of positive job growth, the private sector after the 2001 recession had recovered almost half (47 percent) of the jobs it had lost. By contrast, to date the private sector has recovered only 14 percent of the jobs it lost during 2008 and 2009.
*The early job growth following the 2001 recession was more balanced than the early job growth following the 2008 recession, with significantly more growth in higher-wage industries.



http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Justice/2011/UnbalancedGrowthFeb2011.pdf?nocdn=1