[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 8, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H3039-H3040]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

  (Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, last week, the Senate acted forcefully by 
passing legislation to renew emergency unemployment insurance. I would 
encourage this House to follow that example so we may provide a vital 
lifeline to over 2 million Americans to provide for their families. 
These are hardworking Americans who are out there every day looking for 
employment or receiving education to be better prepared to reenter the 
workforce.
  In Ohio, 75,200 unemployed workers need these extended benefits they 
earned. As our economy continues recovering from the greatest recession 
in modern history, let us give them what they earned.
  We must avoid making this a partisan issue. Workers in both 
Democratic and Republican districts desperately need this critical 
lifeline. The House must act today. Let the Speaker bring the Senate 
bill up for a vote here so the House can finally pass legislation.
  Let us do what is sensible and allow these Americans to keep our 
economic recovery going by not falling into the ranks of poverty 
themselves. These hardworking Americans have earned their benefits.

                [From The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2012]

            Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds

                         (By Catherine Rampell)

       While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in 
     the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during 
     the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report 
     from the National Employment Law Project.
       The disappearance of midwage, midskill jobs is part of a 
     longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of 
     the work force, though it has probably been accelerated by 
     government layoffs.
       ``The overarching message here is we don't just have a jobs 
     deficit; we have a `good jobs' deficit,'' said Annette 
     Bernhardt, the report's author and a policy co-director at 
     the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and 
     advocacy group.
       The report looked at 366 occupations tracked by the Labor 
     Department and clumped them into three equal groups by wage, 
     with each representing a third of American employment in 
     2008. The middle third--occupations in fields like 
     construction, manufacturing and information, with median 
     hourly wages of $13.84 to $21.13--accounted for 60 percent of 
     job losses from the beginning of 2008 to early 2010.
       The job market has turned around since then, but those 
     fields have represented only 22 percent of total job growth. 
     Higher-wage occupations--those with a median wage of $21.14 
     to $54.55--represented 19 percent of job losses when 
     employment was falling, and 20 percent of job gains when 
     employment began growing again.
       Lower-wage occupations, with median hourly wages of $7.69 
     to $13.83, accounted for 21 percent of job losses during the 
     retraction. Since employment started expanding, they have 
     accounted for 58 percent of all job growth.
       The occupations with the fastest growth were retail sales 
     (at a median wage of $10.97 an hour) and food preparation 
     workers ($9.04 an hour). Each category has grown by more than 
     300,000 workers since June 2009.
       Some of these new, lower-paying jobs are being taken by 
     people just entering the labor force, like recent high school 
     and college graduates. Many, though, are being filled by 
     older workers who lost more lucrative jobs in the recession 
     and were forced to take something to scrape by.
       ``I think I've been very resilient and resistant and 
     optimistic, up until very recently,'' said Ellen Pinney, 56, 
     who was dismissed from a $75,000-a-year job in which she 
     managed procurement and supply for an electronics company in 
     March 2008.
       Since then, she has cobbled together a series of temporary 
     jobs in retail and home health care and worked as a part-time 
     receptionist for a beauty salon. She is now working as an 
     unpaid intern for a construction company, putting together 
     bids and business plans for green energy projects, and has 
     moved in with her 86-year-old father in Forked River, N.J.
       ``I really can't bear it anymore,'' she said, noting that 
     her applications to places like PetSmart and Target had gone 
     unanswered. ``From every standpoint--my independence, my 
     sense of purposefulness, my self-esteem, my life planning--
     this is just not what I was planning.''
       As Ms. Pinney's experience shows, low-wage jobs have not 
     been growing especially quickly in this recovery; they 
     account for such a big share of job growth mostly because 
     midwage job growth has been so slow.
       Over the last few decades, the number of midwage, midskill 
     jobs has stagnated or declined as employers chose to automate 
     routine tasks or to move them offshore.
       Job growth has been concentrated in positions that tend to 
     fall into two categories: manual work that must be done in 
     person, like styling hair or serving food, which usually pays 
     relatively little; and more creative, design-oriented work 
     like engineering or surgery, which often pays quite well.
       Since 2001, employment has grown 8.7 percent in lower-wage 
     occupations and 6.6 percent in high-wage ones. Over that 
     period, midwage occupation employment has fallen by 7.3 
     percent.
       This ``polarization'' of skills and wages has been 
     documented meticulously by David H. Autor, an economics 
     professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A 
     recent study found that this polarization accelerated in the 
     last three recessions, particularly the last one, as 
     financial pressures forced companies to reorganize more 
     quickly.
       ``This is not just a nice, smooth process,'' said Henry E. 
     Siu, an economics professor at the University of British 
     Columbia, who helped write the recent study about 
     polarization and the business cycle. ``A lot of these jobs 
     were suddenly wiped out during recession and are not coming 
     back.''
       On top of private sector revamps, state and local 
     governments have been shedding workers in recent years. Those 
     jobs lost in the public sector have been primarily in mid and

[[Page H3040]]

     higher-wage positions, according to Ms. Bernhardt's analysis.
       ``Whenever you look at data like these, there is this 
     tendency to get overwhelmed, that there are these inevitable, 
     big macro forces causing this polarization and we can't do 
     anything about them. In fact, we can,'' Ms. Bernhardt said. 
     She called for more funds for states to stem losses in the 
     public sector and federal infrastructure projects to employ 
     idled construction workers. Both proposals have faced 
     resistance from Republicans in Congress.

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