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94% of all new jobs under Obama part time

Finding out what’s in it: Since the imposition of Obamacare a new study now shows that 94% of all new jobs have been part time work.

In their study [Harvard and Princeton economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger] show that from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as “alternative work” soared during the Obama era, from 10.7% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Alternative, or “gig” work is defined as “temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract company workers, independent contractors or freelancers”, and is generally unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits. The two economists also found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015—with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm.

Krueger, who until 2013 was also the top White House economist serving as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, was “surprised” by the finding. Quoted by quartz, he said “We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment.

While the finding is good news for some, such as graphic designers and lawyers who hate going to an office, for whom new technology and Obamacare has made it more appealing to become an independent contractor. But for those seeking a steady administrative assistant office job, the market is grim. It also explains why despite an apparent recovery in the labor market, wage growth has been non-existent, due to the lack of career advancement and salary increase options for this vast cohort which was hired over the past decade. [emphasis in original]

The lack of long term steady full time work with full benefits has especially hit the young badly. They are increasingly being forced to work multiple jobs to pay the bills, all of which lack any kind of benefits.

Obviously, they must keep voting for those Democrats who brought this paradise to them. Obviously!

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • Phil silverman

    Did the department of Labor reveal that or a couple of idiots probably on the Koch payroll ?Obama created 16,000,000 jobs , many in green and solar , automotive and IT. At one point bush 2 lost 4 million jobs in a 6 mo period . On coast you said O was the worst . Worse than Reagan and bush 2? Why would george ask you that ? O delivered a framework to cover the healthcare for working stiffs . He revived the us auto industry . He cut deficit 72% percent. He increased debt same perc as W but W was not left 2 unfunded wars , unfunded tax relief for rich program , unfunded pharma . He did well as our first black president elected twice in a country still fighting the civil war. And w no help from the confederate , filibuster happy filth at the Capitol. How can we take your stuff seriously after making such a dumb statement on radio?

  • Phil silverman

    Let me add: part time is not automatically an indicator of a bad economy : with technology we have many solo home entrepreneurs and less need to work 35 hours per week. Plus , hold onto your hat, w tech we have a great increase of “handicapped ” workers who do not work 35 hours.
    I have to say your commentary is totally asinine and very surprising .
    In your specialty you actually admit O did ok with Space !

  • Phil Silverman: I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

  • Edward

    Phil silverman,
    Nice cherry picking.

    For one, you suggest that Obama overspent by the same percentage as Bush, but you mislead yourself — and try to mislead your audience — that there is no difference. Instead, you and I now owe more than $30,000 more now (per citizen, it’s more than $160,000 per taxpayer) than when Obama “fixed” the economy.

    True, part time work is not automatically an indicator of a bad economy, but the economy failing to increase at the same rate as inflation and the population increase is an indicator of a bad economy. Even the Great Depression had greater economic growth, and it suffered a double dip depression.

    Obama has also given us fewer entrepreneurs, even those precious, under-productive entrepreneurs that you are so proud don’t produce as much as they could, thus contribute less to the economy. There are two reasons why the economy is not doing as well as you think it is.

    You think that Obama fixed the economy, so let’s assume you to be right and look at the cost: a doubling of the debt and less personal productivity by a lower percentage of the population. So, how do you think we (and by “we” I mean “you,” because I am one in 95 million who are out of the workforce) are going to repay that enormous debt when we make so much less money than we used to?

    I would feel sorry for you, now that you have to pay at least three times the American average annual wages, but I suspect that you voted for such high debt, while I voted against it. I will enjoy the well-deserved Schadenfreude; you set it up for yourself. After all, you put a burden onto me:

    A framework to cover the healthcare for working stiffs? At what cost? Get real. Working stiffs used to have healthcare, whether or not they had insurance. Now they can’t afford the unaffordable insurance, because they only work part time for 25 hours. In order to afford the mandatory, expensive, low-benefit insurance, they must get a second 25 hour job, so now they get to work 50-hour weeks without any overtime pay and spend twice as much time commuting to work. A collateral cost: time spent with the children.

    And that “coverage” is a joke. The premiums are so expensive, the deductibles so high, and the copay so onerous that we really can’t consider it to be insurance. At best it is equivalent to the former catastrophic insurance policies that were less expensive, had lower deductibles, and better co-pay requirements, but your hero, Obama, called that type of insurance “junk” and banned it — then recreated it in a more expensive, less beneficial form and foisted it onto all of us.

    Obama created four classes of insurance framework (no size fits any), all of which are turds.

    For Obama’s Bronze-turd framework, the break-even point is around $17,000 for any year you buy insurance. For an expensive $100,000 medical bill, the breakeven point is about 12 years. If you don’t buy the, useless, low-end, overpriced insurance, then you have to spend $17,000 in any given year or you have to have an expensive disease every 12 years for the insurance to be worth the cost.

    Even many people with pre-existing conditions can’t afford Obama’s healthcare framework.

    The framework isn’t so good for the working stiff as you think, and it is even worse for those of us who ended up out of a job (I got to participate in a downsizing event, but I did not get to participate in Obama’s job creation event).

    Obama’s healthcare framework may be working for you, but I now have to choose between eating and health insurance. I have chosen the scofflaw route of eating. It keeps me healthier for longer, and I’m pretty sure that I can remain relatively healthy for the next 12 years or so.

    We don’t need a framework for unaffordable healthcare, we need actual affordable healthcare, but that isn’t what your hero stuck us with.

    And what about that mandate? What other tyranny in all of history has had the audacity to direct its people as to how to spend their own money? Your hero has created one hell of a tyranny, but you probably think that it is OK for government to micromanage your life. After all, someone as ignorant as you probably have difficulty making good decisions and would prefer to have government bureaucrats babysit your sorry asinine self. This is the only explanation I can think of why you would prefer that health insurance be made far less affordable than it should be – and was – and that government should coerce us into a contractual association, whether the rest of us want to or not.

    Bush didn’t inherit two unfunded wars, he inherited an unacknowledged war. As the 9/11 Commission reported, they were at war with us, but we were not at war with them. It took two wars to clean up that mess, but Obama remade that mess all over again by, once again, denying that they were at war with us. Terrorism is much worse, under Obama, than it was under Bush.

    You wrote: “He did well as our first black president elected twice in a country still fighting the civil war.

    That you fail to understand that the civil war was over long ago is telling as to why you are so wrong on all your other points. Race relations were at an all-time high — which Obama inherited — before Obama relit that fire. That is Obama’s legacy. Indeed, it is likely Obama’s conflagration that has misled you to believe that the civil war still rages.

    This is something that you consider as “did well?” You consider burning down race relations as a good thing? You like race riots? You think it is just fine to kidnap a white man and torture him for two days? This is the attitude that your hero, Obama, instilled upon people in America today.

    LBJ legacy: civil rights. Obama legacy: civil unrest.

    How many of us are better off under Obama’s tyranny? Not many. Probably not even you, Phil silverman, but since you do not recognize tyranny when you experience it, you live in blissful ignorance. I wish that you had moved to a country that was more suited to your inability to care and feed yourself, rather than force the rest of us to live under the thumbs of multiple bureaucrats, all playing babysitter and pulling us in different directions.

    Phil silverman, I have to say your commentary is totally asinine and your ignorance very surprising. I ask you: how can we take you seriously after making such dumb statements?

  • Wayne

    Phil–
    Read the PDF file (no Koch Brothers at all, sorry.) Just Harvard & Princeton econ people.
    http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/bitstream/88435/dsp01zs25xb933/3/603.pdf
    But then again, there is a vast right wing conspiracy going on, isn’t there?

    Edward–
    Good stuff, (ya spent way more time than I would have today, so I owe you one!)

    I think the correct phrase might be “Agent Provocateur,” to describe our ill-informed friend. Can’t speak as to whether he’s a coast-to-coast listener, but I have my theories.

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