Coming Up Short in North Carolina

Just in time for the North Carolina primary, a nice op-ed in the News and Observer (NC) by CEPR's Dean Baker and John Quinterno of the North Carolina Justice Center. One of the things I like is how it makes low-wage work part of a larger story about the economy:

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Regardless of whether the nation technically is in a recession, working families most definitely are. Since the 2001 recession, North Carolina has lost, on balance, more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs, a traditional source of living-wage employment for individuals without post-secondary degrees.

This has occurred alongside rapid growth in the low-wage labor market. Less than one out of every four jobs in North Carolina pays more than $17 an hour and offers both employer-provided health and retirement benefits, according to an analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The loss of good jobs means that many workers in North Carolina are paid too little to make ends meet. A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the N.C. Budget & Tax Center found that 24 percent of North Carolinians in working families earned too little to afford the market prices of a bundle of basic goods and services. Although public programs designed to help workers in low-paid jobs, such as subsidized child-care, helped close the gap for about one-sixth of the people in this group, most low-wage workers still came up short.

Our next president will have to address both the immediate problems stemming from the recession and the longer-term problems associated with the loss of good jobs. Ideally, the policies that combat the recession in the short term could also help counteract the larger problem of low-wage work.

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