The threat of the job-is-worth-less recovery
Yes, jobs are finally being created, but U.S. workers will find their incomes increasingly pressured by lower wages, higher benefit fees and global competition. That’s good for your boss but could hurt the markets.

By Jim Jubak

Okay, it’s not a jobless recovery. It’s the job-is-worth-less recovery.

The economic recovery we’ve anticipated for so long is here. Forecasters think the data will show the economy grew by 6.1% -- some say as much as 6.5% -- in the three months that ended Sept. 30.

And the jobless recovery doesn’t look jobless after all. Payrolls grew by 57,000 in September, and the number of people taking temporary jobs, an indicator of future job growth, climbed by 33,000.

Initial claims for unemployment dropped another 4,000 to 386,000 in the latest report. That’s below the 400,000 level that many economists believe marks the difference between times of growing employment (such as now) and times of growing unemployment (as in much of 2003).

But despite all that, Americans are not optimistic about the future. October’s 89.4 reading on the University of Michigan poll of Consumer Sentiment, for example, was just 15% higher than the 10-year low hit in March 2003. Remember March? It wasn’t exactly the most optimistic of times. The war in Iraq was still going on when the survey was taken. Polls taken in the last month show a majority think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

The numbers about the economy aren’t real
Why so little joy in Mudville? Because the average U.S. citizen who works for a living knows that this economy is still crummy despite the numbers. Because we know that the new jobs that are being created pay less than the jobs that have been destroyed, that they come with fewer benefits and that they promise less security.

In September, 138 million of us were employed, and 9 million -- or about 6.1% -- were officially unemployed. That unemployed number doesn’t include the 5 million people in the United States who work at part time jobs and say they’d like full time jobs if they could find them.

In September, 57,000 more people received paychecks than the month before. The biggest job loss that month came in manufacturing, where 29,000 people lost their spots on the payroll. Yep, the manufacturing sector continued to lose jobs even as the economy as a whole added jobs.

And the biggest gains in jobs came in business and professional services (66,000 workers added to payrolls in this kind of work), health care and social assistance (15,000), and retail (15,000).

Manufacturing jobs in the United States pay an average of $650 a week or about $34,000 a year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Retail jobs, in contrast, pay an average of $373 a week, or about $19,000 a year. Even as the recovery starts to pick up speed, the U.S. economy is shedding $34,000-a-year jobs and replacing them with $19,000-a-year jobs.

Your paycheck is getting nickel-and-dimed

That’s not the only way in which the jobs being created by this recovery are worth less than the jobs being destroyed in the recovery, or less than those that existed before the downturn even started. Workers taking new jobs and workers hanging on to existing jobs are paying more out of their paychecks.

Your job is now like the “free” checking accounting offered by some banks. Having an account is free, but you can pay through the nose for blank checks, for bouncing a check, to get a peek at a canceled check, for falling below a minimum balance, and even for using a teller.

In the same way, many paychecks are now worth less because of fees that you have to pay that your employer used to cover.

For example, 56% of U.S. employers raised healthcare premiums, deductibles or co-pays in the last year, according to Watson Wyatt Worldwide. And 18% now charge an extra $100 a year for family coverage if the employee’s working spouse declines coverage from his or her own employer.

Sometimes, the squeeze is even more direct. In the last 12 months, 12% of U.S. employers simply reduced benefits. Another 6% plan to do so next year.

It’s not like U.S. companies are raising salaries to compensate for these benefit reductions or to make up for the costs they’re passing along to employees. Raises were below 4% in the past year, the third year in a row they’ve been below 4% and the lowest rate in 30 years, according to Hewitt Associates.

Watson Wyatt found that 45% of U.S. employers reduced their budgets for salary increases in the past year, and 16% eliminated or severely reduced their budgets for bonuses. Next year looks not better -- but less worse. Only 12% of U.S. employers are planning to further reduce the budget for salary increases and only 5% will slash the bonus budget again. (To read more on the survey, click on the link at left under Related Sites.)

Now, some of this is because employers themselves face rising costs for supplying these benefits and, with global competition being what it is, they have to pass those costs along to someone. And they certainly can’t pass them along to consumers at this time.

But many companies are using the slow economy and the scarcity of good jobs to pass more than the increases in their costs along to employees. According to Hewitt Associates, the cost of health insurance climbed 15% nationally in 2003 and will jump another 13% in 2004. But employees are looking at a 23% increase in what they pay for health insurance in 2004. That will be the third straight year with an increase of 20% or more for employees.

I’d like to believe this kind of squeeze on workers’ pay checks is only temporary, that with the return of better economic times the pendulum will swing back and workers will recoup all they’ve lost in benefits and pay and a bit more.

The powerful push to move U.S. jobs to low-wage markets

But I just don’t see that happening. Workers in the job-is-worth-less recovery are going to feel so insecure in their jobs that it will be tough to recover the ground that they’ve lost so far.

First, the “recovered” economy isn’t going to look that different from the economy during the downturn. Thanks to unrelenting global competition in everything from chips to call centers, companies will be forced to follow the most recent rounds of cost-cutting, restructuring, and job reductions with other rounds of cost-cutting, restructuring and job reductions. That painful process looks like it will be a permanent part of life for employers and employees for the foreseeable future.

For example, Sony