WE'VE GOT TO LEAVE THEM SOMETHING:

'Job Quality' -- Campaign Myth (Robert J. Samuelson, September 15, 2004, Washington Post)

There may be lots of reasons to vote for John Kerry over George Bush, but "job quality" isn't one of them. Kerry has been telling crowds that the country is "shipping jobs overseas and replacing them with jobs that pay you less than the jobs you have today." Ergo, job quality is going to the dogs. A few weeks ago I wrote that presidents have little power to influence job creation. The trouble for Kerry is that they have even less power to alter job "quality" -- the nature of new jobs, how much they pay and how much security they provide. Presidents can't do much more than you or I can. [...]

From 2002 to 2012, the number of construction workers is expected to rise from 5.6 million to 6.5 million, the number of computer programmers and software engineers from 1.2 million to 1.6 million, and the number of purchasing agents from 419,000 to 455,000. Yes, a changing economy demands new skills and creates new types of jobs. In 1870 almost half the workforce was in farming. But job shifts are gradual.

I suspect that, in a narrow sense, Kerry's claims are half right and half wrong: half wrong because many jobs being lost to other countries are low-skilled and low-paying (that's why they're being lost); and half right because new jobs being created in this recovery may pay less than jobs lost -- mostly for domestic reasons -- in the recession and its aftermath. People who lose their jobs often have to take pay cuts to get new work; the latest BLS study finds a typical wage loss of about 7 percent. In a weak labor market, companies can also hire for a little less. Kerry's charge is plausible, though studies of recent job figures reach differing conclusions. But Kerry's broader message -- the one intended to impress voters -- is wrong.

He implicitly suggests that the U.S. economy under Bush can't create high-paying (aka "good'') jobs. We heard a similar refrain in the 1980s when the United States was supposedly becoming "a nation of hamburger flippers." The story was wrong then, too.

No wonder Democrats are wilding on airplanes, all of their myths are being put to rest.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 15, 2004 9:39 PM