U.S. companies are increasingly forcing employees on to part time arrangements. In an almost 2,000 word article on tomdispatch.com, Barbara Garson gives a heart rending case study while noting that:
- In June 2013, 4 years since the official end of the great recession, the U.S. has recovered only 6.6 million of the 8.7 million lost jobs.
- 21% of the jobs lost were low wage, but 58% of the jobs regained fall into that category.
Garson says a common explanation for that second statistic is that the bad jobs are coming back first and the good jobs will follow. She believes the actual reason is that companies have simply degraded the pay and conditions for their less skilled workers.
I think part of the problem may be an unintended consequence of Obama Care which requires employer funding for staff working longer than 30 hours per week. But more than that,it is part of a post industrial trend for jobs to vanish and for companies to farm out their work.