RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Low-Wage Job Growth, Polarization, and the Limits and Opportunities of the Service Economy
JF RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
FD Russell Sage Foundation
SP 56
OP 76
DO 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.4.02
VO 5
IS 4
A1 Rachel E. Dwyer
A1 Erik Olin Wright
YR 2019
UL http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/5/4/56.abstract
AB We analyze U.S. job growth from the 1980s to the 2010s. We define jobs as occupations within sectors to capture position in the production system as well as skill hierarchies. Low-wage jobs outgrew middle-wage jobs over much of this period, particularly for women and nonwhite workers. Service work drove most low-wage job growth, but even a small resurgence in manufacturing job growth in the 2010s was concentrated in low-wage jobs. Given the constraints of economic restructuring on the growth of decent jobs, we consider alternative logics for the creation of jobs in twenty-first-century economies. The prospects for job growth in the future, we argue, requires a robust defense of these alternative logics that can and do thrive alongside and within a capitalist market economy.