The Patterns of Job Expansions in the United States : a comparison of the 1960 s and 1990 s

This paper examines the quality of jobs generated during periods of job expansion from the 1960s through then 1990s. The central results of the study are: First, the long 1990s economic boom produced a pattern of asymetrically polarized job expansion: very strong expansion of jobs in the top tier of the employment structure combined with very limited growth in the middle. Second, while job growth at the top was strong in the 1990s, the overall pattern of job expansion was much less favorable for the labor force as a whole than in earlier expansions. Third, there has been a dramatic change in the racial and gender patterns of job expansion since the 1960s: gender differences in job expansion were very sharp in the 1960s and quite muted in the 1990s, while the racially polarized character of job expansion has increased, especially at the bottom of the employment structure. Finally, immigration, especially of Hispanics, is deeply connected to the employment expansion in the bottom tiers of the employment structure. Underlying these descriptive patterns are dramatic changes in the sectoral patterns of job expansion in the 1990s compared to the 1960s: the much slower growth of middle-level jobs in the 1990s is rooted in the decline of manufacturing; the stronger growth of bottom end jobs is rooted in accelerated growth of retail trade and personal services in the 1990s; and the very strong growth of high end jobs is rooted in high tech sectors The 1990s witnessed the most extended period of sustained economic growth, and with it employment expansion, in the United States in the 20 century: the 120 months of expansion surpassed the previously longest boom of 106 months in the 1960s. While no one disputes the fact of this enormous employment expansion, there is considerable disagreement over its character and implications. Two images have dominated both scholarly analyses and the popular media. One image characterizes this expansion as dominated by the creation of McJobs – low paid, low security, dead-end service sector jobs. The 1990s is seen as a continuation, perhaps in some ways even an intensification, of trends already present in the 1980s of increasing inequality, transfers of well-paid industrial jobs to the third world, wage stagnation for the large majority, and real economic improvements limited only to the highest tiers of the employment structure. As Robert Kuttner (1994:16) wrote in Business Week in the first Clinton Administration: “As labor day approaches the economy is generating jobs – 4 million since President Clinton was elected – but too few good ones. If anything the trends of the 1980s have intensified: astronomical earnings gains for the economy’s superstars. In the middle: relentless downsizing, with new pressures on once-secure professionals as well as depletion of solid blue-collar jobs. At the bottom: growing part-time and temporary hires, low wage jobs in services, especially retailing, and dismal starting wages.” The other image sees the expansion as a job creation miracle, reflecting the emergence of a dynamic “new economy” of well-paid jobs, deepening prosperity and enhanced opportunities. As an ad placed by the Pfzier corporation in The Economist in 1999 declared: