Posted on 04/09/2014 8:37:27 AM PDT by xzins
According to stunning new numbers just released by the federal government, nine of the top ten most commonly held jobs in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year. When you break that down, that means that most of these workers are making less than $3,000 a month before taxes. And once you consider how we are being taxed into oblivion, things become even more frightening. Can you pay a mortgage and support a family on just a couple grand a month? Of course not. In the old days, a single income would enable a family to live a very comfortable middle class lifestyle in most cases. But now those days are long gone. In 2014, both parents are expected to work, and in many cases both of them have to get multiple jobs just in order to break even at the end of the month. The decline in the quality of our jobs is a huge reason for the implosion of the middle class in this country. You can't have a middle class without middle class jobs, and we have witnessed a multi-decade decline in middle class jobs in the United States. As long as this trend continues, the middle class is going to continue to shrink.
The following is a list of the most commonly held jobs in America according to the federal government. As you can see, 9 of the top 10 most commonly held occupations pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year...
1.Retail salespersons, 4.48 million workers earning $25,370 2.Cashiers 3.34 million workers earning $20,420 3.Food prep and serving staff, 3.02 million workers earning $18,880 4.General office clerk, 2.83 million working earning $29,990 5.Registered nurses, 2.66 million workers earning $68,910 6.Waiters and waitresses, 2.40 million workers earning $20,880 7.Customer service representatives, 2.39 million workers earning $33,370 8.Laborers, and freight and material movers, 2.28 million workers earning $26,690 9.Secretaries and admins (not legal or medical), 2.16 million workers earning $34,000 10.Janitors and cleaners (not maids), 2.10 million workers earning, $25,140 Overall, an astounding 59 percent of all American workers bring home less than $35,000 a year in wages.
So if you are going to make more than $35,000 this year, you are solidly in the upper half.
But that doesn't mean that you will always be there.
More Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing day.
Just consider the case of a 47-year-old woman named Kristina Feldotte. Together with her husband, they used to make about $80,000 a year. But since she lost her job three years ago, their combined income has fallen to about $36,000 a year...
Three years ago, Kristina Feldotte, 47, and her husband earned a combined $80,000. She considered herself solidly middle class. The couple and their four children regularly vacationed at a lake near their home in Saginaw, Michigan.
But in August 2012, Feldotte was laid off from her job as a special education teacher. She's since managed to find only part-time teaching work. Though her husband still works as a truck salesman, their income has sunk by more than half to $36,000.
"Now we're on the upper end of lower class," Feldotte said. There is a common assumption out there that if you "have a job" that you must be doing "okay".
But that is not even close to the truth.
The reality of the matter is that you can even have two or three jobs and still be living in poverty. In fact, you can even be working for the government or the military and still need food stamps...
Since the start of the Recession, the dollar amount of food stamps used at military commissaries, special stores that can be used by active-duty, retired, and some veterans of the armed forces has quadrupled, hitting $103 million last year. Food banks around the country have also reported a rise in the number of military families they serve, numbers that swelled during the Recession and haven’t, or have barely, abated. There are so many people that are really hurting out there.
Today, someone wrote to me about one of my recent articles about food price increases and told me about how produce prices were going through the roof in that particular area. This individual wondered how ordinary families were going to be able to survive in this environment.
That is a very good question.
I don't know how they are going to survive.
In some cases, the suffering that is going on behind closed doors is far greater than any of us would ever imagine.
And often, it is children that suffer the most...
A Texas couple kept their bruised, malnourished 5-year-old son in a diaper and locked in a closet of their Spring home, police said in a horrifying case of abuse.
The tiny, blond-haired boy was severely underweight, his shoulder blades, ribs and vertebrae showing through his skin, when officers found him late last week. You can see some photos of that poor little boy right here.
I hope that those abusive parents are put away for a very long time.
Sadly, there are lots of kids that are really suffering right now. There are more than a million homeless schoolchildren in America, and there are countless numbers that will go to bed hungry tonight.
But if you live in wealthy enclaves on the east or west coasts, all of this may sound truly bizarre to you. Where you live, you may look around and not see any poverty at all. That is because America has become increasingly segregated by wealth. Some are even calling this the "skyboxification of America"...
The richest Americans—the much-talked about 1 percent—are a cloistered class. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz scathingly put it, they “have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.” The Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel has similarly lamented the “skyboxification” of American life, in which “people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives.”
The substantial and growing gap between the rich and everyone else is increasingly inscribed on our geography. There have always been affluent neighborhoods, gated enclaves, and fabled bastions of wealth like Greenwich, Connecticut; Grosse Pointe, Michigan; Potomac, Maryland; and Beverly Hills, California. But America’s bankers, lawyers, and doctors didn’t always live so far apart from teachers, accountants, and small business owners, who themselves weren’t always so segregated from the poorest, most struggling Americans. Nobody should talk about an "economic recovery" until the middle class starts growing again.
Even as the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights over the past year, the decline of middle class America has continued unabated.
And most Americans know deep inside that something is deeply broken. For example, a recent CNBC All-America Economic Survey found that over 80 percent of all Americans consider the economy to be "fair" or "poor".
Yes, for the moment things are going quite well for the top 10 percent of the nation, but that won't last long either. None of the problems that caused the last great financial crisis have been fixed. In fact, they have gotten even worse. We are steamrolling toward another great financial crisis and our leaders are absolutely clueless.
When the next crisis strikes, the economic suffering in this nation is going to get even worse.
As bad as things are now, they are not even worth comparing to what is coming.
So I hope that you are getting prepared. Time is running out.
Who said anything about the employers paying for anything? All of my skill acquisition that moved me from entry level job land to skilled labor land I did on my time with my money.
They hired a button pusher not an analyst. They should have (and maybe did) have an analyst around too, but analysts costs more than button pushers and you don’t want them pushing buttons any GED holder could push.
SERIESLY? Welcome to planet Earth. hmmmm...I see that your visa has expired...
Is there such a thing as an ethically fair wage for the time and effort you require from a regular laborer?
Pure economics says that the job is worth what anyone will take.
Is there a moral, ethical, and or religious/biblical take on that that modifies that understanding?
It’s not just economics that says the job is worth what people are willing to get paid for it, that’s the moral position too. If I’m willing to do that job for that money then I am voluntarily entering into the agreement and there’s nothing wrong with you “only” paying me that much.
Generally true, but not always true that you are willingly entering into that agreement.
Any kind of duress affecting you means that you wouldn’t normally enter such an agreement.
Therefore, it isn’t moral. If the employer knows of the duress, then the employer is guilty of taking advantage of another person’s desperate circumstance.
Sounds like lowest bidder problems. The company isn’t charging enough for the work so it wouldn’t be profitable to hire the people who should be doing the work.
Life is duress, we all get stuck in things we don’t want to do. But that doesn’t change the fact that a person CAN get other work, maybe worse work, maybe they have to move, maybe cheaper, but it’s out there. Your relationship with your employer IS voluntary, you said yes to that wage. Nothing immoral about it. Especially in the 21st century, we don’t have indentured servitude anymore.
Deuteronomy 24:15
Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
1 Samuel 12:3
Here I stand. Testify against me in the presence of the Lord and his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated? Whom have I oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe to make me shut my eyes? If I have done any of these things, I will make it right.”
Malachi 3
“Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem
Will be pleasant to the Lord,
As in the days of old,
As in former years.
5 And I will come near you for judgment;
I will be a swift witness
Against sorcerers,
Against adulterers,
Against perjurers,
Against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans,
And against those who turn away an alien—
Because they do not fear Me,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
true, by definition of "median", at any income level ... there will always be half above and half below the median
Not real good at discerning sarcasm, are ya?
In a few years we'll all be earning seven-digit incomes.
Of course a loaf of bread will cost $499 by then, but we'll all be millionaires!
That's the important thing.
Crony capitalists to provide the dough.
Entitlement army to provide the votes.
A brilliant plan that is working well these days.
zap ... i’m sterile ... completely missed the invisible flag
Sad.
sad, indeed
As one who is about to turn seventy I can tell you the truth about inflation as opposed to the absurdity spouted by the goobermint and the lamestream propagandists. Thirty five thousand dollars is more than most working people used to make in TWELVE years when I was a small child! Yes, one month of that annual rate of thirty five thousand would have supported a family for a full year. We are approaching the point that it takes the same nominal amount that used to be projected lifetime earnings to amount to one good year’s income. If the current “too low inflation” continues we will soon have Zimbabwe style inflation. Thirty five thousand might be the price of a pack of cigarettes.
If any of the younger crowd thinks I exaggerate let me add that I received my honorable from the USN in 1965. When I came home I could drive up to a drive in eating place, honk my horn and have a curb hop come to my car and I would order a cheeseburger, fries and a twelve ounce beer which would be quickly brought to my car. I would give the curbhop one dollar and say, “Keep the change”, he would reply, “Thank you, SIR”. That is how it used to be, at least in my area.
Community organizers,for example,are known to write multiple autobiographies,travel on luxurious private jets and vacation in some of the most exclusive spots on earth....And get TV commentator jobs (and never pay back their Court ordered judgements) and turn in the “Chin” Gigante.
If you're a teamster working for a trucking company handling freight at a terminal (cross dock) and getting forty hours a week you are making way more than $26,690 annually. Throw in some overtime and you can easily double that number plus.
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