Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (61677)	8/5/2007 3:57:55 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

my congressman SUKKS

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (61677)	8/5/2007 7:56:11 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

And the here is the result....... One thing missing in jobs boom: high pay Like many people who have moved to Seattle in recent years, Brenda Portis had little trouble finding work. Well-paying work — that's something else again. Portis, a 33-year-old certified nursing assistant, worked full time at a West Seattle nursing home until last month, tending to the needs of elderly and disabled residents. It's a fast-growing field, and one that suits her warm, outgoing nature. But the pay — $12.50 an hour, or $500 a week before taxes — didn't go very far for Portis, the main wage earner in a family of six. "I really like the work I do," she said. "If this job paid me more, then we'd be fine." Four years into the recovery from the steep recession of the early 2000s, the state's economy is by most accounts humming like a well-tuned V-6 engine. More Washingtonians are working than ever before, the state unemployment rate hovers near a 30-year low, and last year the state's average wage rose 5.3 percent. But those top-line measures don't tell the whole story: A Seattle Times analysis of state jobs data shows that most of the new jobs created in the current expansion don't pay all that well, and fewer high-wage jobs have been generated than during the late-1990s boom. Consider: • Of the 240,000 jobs created in Washington between 2002 and 2006, almost 70 percent were in fields where the average weekly pay was less than $832 a week (or $43,264 a year). That's the income calculated as a "living wage" in Washington for a family of two adults and two children, according to Penn State's Poverty in America project. • Several of the fastest-growing job categories — in retail, hospitality, agriculture and social services — were at the lower end of the wage scale. For instance, more than 26,000 administrative and support jobs have been created, with an average weekly wage of $605 — about $31,500 a year. General retailers added almost 9,900 jobs, paying on average $460.53 a week, or less than $24,000 a year. Bars and restaurants generated more than 20,000 jobs, paying an average of about $280 a week, or $14,550 a year, though those workers rely on tips for much of their pay. • The current recovery has so far generated far fewer high-paying jobs than the last boom, which ran roughly from 1995 to 2000. During those heady dot-com years, businesses statewide created more than 99,000 jobs paying more than $50,000 a year — 30.6 percent of all new jobs — primarily in Internet, telecommunications and other high-technology fields. seattletimes.nwsource.com