Report reveals disparity in job quality

Missing rungs on the ladder to middle-income jobs are making
upward social mobility increasingly difficult in California,
according to a labor report released Tuesday.

The report, produced by the University of California Institute
for Labor and Employment, discusses economic issues currently
facing California. Topics from the six-chapter report include the
large disparity between high- and low-quality jobs, regional
economic differences throughout the state, and the impact of the
national recession on workers.

In contrast to the 1960s, when job growth was evenly distributed
between “good” and “bad” jobs, the
’90s have displayed a much more polarized trend with
relatively little job growth in the middle, according to a chapter
on the characteristics of job growth for the last eight years.

In the last decade, job disparities affected the Los Angeles
area harder than any other region in California, making moving up
in the work force more difficult for its community members.

“The L.A. area is in the eye of the storm,” said ILE
Director Ruth Milkman, co-author of the chapter and a professor of
sociology at UCLA.

“There is more extreme evidence of the disappearing middle
class in L.A. than in the rest of California, and more in
California than the U.S.,” she continued.

Economists call this an “hourglass economy,” where
fewer and fewer people can make the transition from lower to middle
class, Milkman said.

More immigrants, low-paying jobs and a manufacturing-based
economy are factors causing the Los Angeles area to experience
larger disparities in job quality than in its urban counterpart in
the state, the San Francisco Bay area.

In the Bay Area, jobs tend to be better overall, with a more
college-educated work force, but the region still has its own
employment woes.

“You see people in the Bay Area with a fair amount of
education still at the bottom of the totem pole because everyone
there is relatively educated,” Milkman said. “Education
is not a guarantee.”

The fact that education will not necessarily lead to
high-quality jobs, coupled with ever-increasing competition in the
work force, is causing many students to seek schooling beyond their
undergraduate education.

“I feel like I need to go to graduate school in order to
pursue my career goals and be successful,” said second-year
political science student Dan Smith. “Higher levels of
competition mean that I need to be more of an expert in my
field.”

Offering quality education and training for workers will play a
large role for upcoming generations in helping to close the gap
between the rich and the poor, said Paul Ong, director of the UCLA
Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

“In the long run, in order to have a productive society we
need a productive, skilled labor force,” Ong said. “We
need to offer people opportunities either on the job or in colleges
to gain the skills that make them more competitive in the
economy.”

But even a skilled work force can be setback by larger economic
factors, such as a recession.

In a chapter titled “Recession and Reaction” the
labor report discusses the effects of the current recession on
California workers.

The energy crisis, dot-com crash and Sept. 11 are all
contributors to the current recession, but the report concludes
that California’s broad labor force can still rebound.

“The fundamental asset that attracts new investment and
production to the state … is the diversity and skill of the
California labor force,” the report stated.