It has been some time since employment statistics were as straightforward as how many individuals are working and how many are not. Today, there is a much greater appreciation for the sub-categories, especially one for those who have been out of work for some time. The long-term unemployed are having a much more difficult time finding employment. So, too, are the number of part-time workers who would like to work full time, and as we know too well in Southwest Colorado, the number of employed who work a couple of perhaps very different jobs in order to earn the equivalent of 50 or 60 hours a week.
And, considering La Plata County, where are the many construction jobs that energized this economy in the first six or eight years of this century when large home building was going strong? Some of those jobs are back following the burst of the mortgage bubble in 2008 but only a portion of them.
(Simultaneously and unrelated to mortgages, gone are many of the two-state gas-drilling jobs that were held by San Juan County, New Mexico, workers who very likely spent a portion of their paychecks in Southwest Colorado. Those jobs briefly went to Mesa County where gas could be obtained at a lower cost, and then to North Dakota with its oil. Only recently, with the natural-gas price around $4, are there signs of renewed interest in production close to home.)
In the May jobs report released at the end of last week, the number of jobs in this country are now at the level they were in January 2008, a peak. As The Wall Street Journal reported, May was the fourth month of strong job creation. That is very good news.
While the numbers are encouraging, it is the type of new jobs that is worrisome. According to the Journal, the new jobs are not entirely in three sectors that are considered well-paying: construction, manufacturing and government. Instead, many of the jobs have come in the accommodation and food-service areas. Anecdotally, there is plenty of evidence of that along Main Avenue in Durango.
Lower-paying jobs, and limited pay increases in even the better jobs, have not surprisingly meant that household income adjusted for inflation is about unchanged compared to five years ago. That, too, from the Journal.
Like a school with two dozen classrooms that never has exactly 28 students in each, the match between job availability and skilled workers has its imperfections and always will. There are unfilled skilled jobs in some parts of the country, but because of the restraints of family or home ownership, workers are unwilling or unable to relocate to them. Other priorities, or perhaps either the fear of risk or the hope that a cycle of jobs will return, take precedence.
What the slow shift toward jobs in lower-paid sectors of the economy will mean is uncertain. Perhaps, as occurred in Seattle, there will be populist efforts to mandate a higher minimum wage.
What has not changed in recent decades is the value of an education. Consistently since 2008, the unemployment rate among college graduates has been half that of those with only a high school education. And without a high school education, the chance of any significant job and then advancement is slim to none.
Employment and its opposite, unemployment, are being sliced into increasingly more specific categories. As the country struggles to determine how to improve job creation, good job creation, and how workers can acquire the skills they need for those jobs, the familiarity with those slices will be very important.
