Middle Class Most Hit By Job Losses

We have written about unemployment numbers before. We spotted this today:
“The study, which was authored by NELP’s Annette Bernhardt, found that by far the bulk of the jobs lost, 60%, were in the middle range of the income scale. That compares to 21.3% for workers in high income jobs, and 18.7% for low-wage workers. Given the job loss, you would expect middle-income jobs to have rebounded the most in the past two years. But that’s not the case. In fact, 73% of the jobs that have been added since the beginning of the recession have been in what the study calls low wage jobs. The middle class squeeze is still on.

The study looked at 366 professions and broke them into three groups with an equal number of workers in each. That makes it possible to compare the job loss, but it means that the income numbers for middle and low end workers are perhaps lower than you would expect. Jobs that paid roughly more than $43,000 were deemed to be relatively high wage professions. Income in the $28,000 to $43,000 were categorized as middle-income job. Anyone below that was in the low-income category.”