Consumers (the Public Sector) and the People Who Serve Them (the Private Sector)

Analysis: Where are Those Jobs? Bars and Hospitals

It is becoming very, very difficult to live a middle class lifestyle if you do not work for the government. More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs in the private sector, which are often very low paying. So the tables have turned: the private sector now works to service the public sector, the last great source of middle class.

April 1, 2011

Reuters – The U.S. labor market is finally luring back some discouraged workers. They may find the most "help wanted" signs at bars, restaurants and doctor's offices.

Friday's employment report for March came in largely as expected. There were 216,000 jobs created last month, primarily in the services sector, and the unemployment rate dipped slightly to 8.8 percent.

The details behind the headlines looked solid, if unspectacular. The dip in the jobless rate reflected improved hiring rather than discouraged workers dropping out of the labor force. The employment-to-population ratio, a measure of how many Americans are working, rose slightly to 58.5 percent.

For the handful of U.S. Federal Reserve officials who have begun sounding the inflation alarm, wage pressures were not an issue. Average hourly earnings held steady during the month and have risen only 1.7 percent from a year ago, unchanged from February's rate and well below prerecession levels.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

* Hiring in March was concentrated in the services sector, with healthcare accounting for nearly one-quarter of the net job gains. Food and drinking places added 26,500 positions.

* Temporary hiring accounted for 28,800 jobs, continuing a recent run of solid growth. Economists often look at temporary jobs as a leading indicator of future full-time hiring, although some say companies are relying on temporary staff to fill longer-term needs.

* The public sector was once again a drag. Local governments cut 15,000 positions last month, mostly in education, another sign of how tight budgets are affecting employment.

* There were 921,00 discouraged workers counted in March, down from 1.02 million in February.

INFLATION WATCH

* Average weekly hours worked held steady at 34.3, and earnings per hour were flat at $22.87.

* There is no evidence the recent spike in food and energy prices was translating into higher wage demands, which should provide some comfort for the inflation hawks.

* For workers, however, flat wages in the face of rising costs means lower discretionary spending power.

* For the Fed, the figures point to no imminent interest rate rise despite a flurry of recent comments from the hawkish wing suggesting a hike could come sooner than expected.

McDonald's Hiring Day Draws Crowds, High Hopes

The average annual salary in the U.S. is $43,460. Salaried managers for McDonald's company-owned restaurants can make between about $32,000 and $50,000 annually. That's slightly less than elementary school teachers, who average $53,150. It's more than bank tellers, at $24,780.

April 19, 2011

AP - McDonald's Corp. went on the offense Tuesday against critics who complain that it's a lousy place to work.

The world's largest hamburger chain held its first National Hiring Day and was awarded with a strong response from job seekers. Thousands showed up at restaurants nationwide to apply for jobs mixing shakes and serving Happy Meals. The company planned to hire 50,000 new workers in one day, boosting its staff by about 7 percent.

McDonald's painted the event as a boon for an economy where more than 13 million Americans are looking for work. But the real purpose, industry experts said, is that McDonald's needs to portray itself as a decent employer.

That will be a challenge for a company whose name is often synonymous with "you-want-fries-with-that" jokes. "McJob" even has a place in The Oxford English Dictionary, defined as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects."

But to people who need work, any stigma is beside the point.

Managers at a McDonald's in Cincinnati said a dozen or so applicants had lined up by 7 a.m., an hour before the restaurant planned to start interviews. By 10 a.m., the store had interviewed 100 people and had 25 more waiting.

Tiwian Irby, 28, was hoping for a full-time job and wasn't particular about what it would entail. He said he'd had trouble finding regular work since getting laid off from his construction job two years ago.

"A job is a job to me," said Irby, a father of three. "I'll take whatever is available."

McDonald's and other fast-food chains, once an entry point into the work force for teenagers, appear to be turning into an employer of more adults, a legacy of the recession, industry watchers said. The average age of a fast-food worker is 29.5, up from 22 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Danitra Barnett, McDonald's U.S. vice president of human resources, said she couldn't specify what proportion of the 50,000 new jobs will be full-time, or what they will pay. About 90 percent of McDonald's restaurants are owned by franchisees, and the company doesn't control what they offer in wages or benefits.

Barnett said most franchisees pay more than minimum wage, which is $7.25-an-hour nationally. $7.25 an hour would amount to about $15,000 a year for a full-time worker, according to government formulas.

McDonald's said it and its franchisees will spend an additional $518 million in the coming year because of Tuesday's hiring. That amounts to just over $10,000 per new employee.

Spokeswoman Danya Proud said the company preferred to focus on the net economic benefit of the new hiring, including the money that employees will spend in their local economies.

In Senate testimony last year, McDonald's said that about 75 percent of employees at company-owned restaurants are part-time, averaging 18 hours a week. Restaurant employees tend to stay an average of 17 months, HR chief Rich Floersch testified in December.

But McDonald's also touts how its jobs can grow into bigger opportunities. According to the company, 30 percent of its executives started in restaurants, as well as more than 70 percent of restaurant managers.

Salaried managers for company-owned restaurants can make between about $32,000 and $50,000 annually, Proud said.

That's slightly less than elementary school teachers, who average $53,150, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's more than bank tellers, at $24,780. The average annual salary in the U.S. is $43,460.

McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner made $9.7 million last year.

Cortney Gatewood, 16, was looking for part-time work at a Cincinnati McDonald's on Tuesday. She said she wanted to save for college and didn't hesitate to consider the fast-food chain.

"I think it's a good place to work," Gatewood said. "I come here almost every day to eat anyway."

Though the 50,000 jobs are new, McDonald's usually staffs up for summer anyway, and it's constantly gaining and losing employees. It added 50,000 new workers in April last year, so Tuesday's blitz amounts to typical hiring, albeit compressed into a day.

With 14,000 U.S. restaurants, Tuesday's planned additions amount to about three or four new employees per restaurant -- the amount that each store is probably usually looking for anyway, said Sara Senatore, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

For Richmond, Va., area franchisee Sue Durlak, National Hiring Day was an opportunity to expand the applicant pool for her 10 restaurants, and maybe even find someone who can follow in her footsteps. She started part-time in 1982 while working as a middle-school health teacher in Illinois to supplement her income. She has since worked her way up to owning several locations.

"I do look at anyone who applies, as well as the rest of my team, as the potential as a lifer," Durlak said.

McDonald's is expected to release the final hiring count next week.

Government Jobs: The New Path to the Middle Class

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2008, the average federal employee made $79,197. Don’t think that federal jobs are safe from the same forces that shipped America’s good factory jobs overseas. For the last decade there has been a push to “privatize” federal jobs; that is, to make federal workers compete for their jobs with contractors. On its face, that competition might strike you as fair when, in practice it is anything but fair and those private companies looking to take over Federal jobs quickly learned how to “play” the system. Only the owners of the companies who take over federal jobs get rich—and the owners of these companies come from the same 5% of the population that owns 80% of the wealth of our country! They blanket Capitol Hill with lobbyists and buy our political system right out from under the working people of this country.

TMG Books - Are Federal Jobs The Factory Jobs of the Future?

It used to be that unionized factory jobs were the best path to the middle-class in America. Factory jobs, union factory jobs in particular, afforded the workers a good wage, health insurance, and a defined-benefit retirement plan—all three being the foundation of a middle-class lifestyle.

Most of those jobs no longer exist and in the economy of 2010, as I write this, the workers displaced by when a factory closes and their jobs being shipped overseas are slowly losing their grip on the middle-class because they are unable to find a job offering those same benefits. This is a tragedy, really.

And factory jobs are not coming back. America is making the transition from an economy where we built things to a service economy. The downside of that is that service jobs are most often not as good as a union factory job in terms of pay and benefits. And they are not the path to the middle class.

A job with Uncle Sam does provide all the pay and benefits of a factory job. In fact, Federal jobs pay more than comparable jobs in the private sector.

But don’t think that Federal jobs are safe from the same forces that shipped America’s good factory jobs overseas. For the last decade there has been a push to “privatize” Federal jobs; that is, to make Federal workers compete for their jobs with contractors.

On its face, that competition might strike you as fair when, in practice it is anything but fair and those private companies looking to take over Federal jobs quickly learned how to “play” the system. Every Federal job contracted out is one more path to the middle-class lost!

Only the owners of the companies who take over Federal jobs get rich—and the owners of these companies come from the same 5% of the population that owns 80% of the wealth of our country! They blanket Capitol Hill with lobbyists and buy our political system right out from under the working people of this country.

Federal contractors are taking over government jobs from which they are rightly prohibited. The government is even using mercenaries to fight our wars! The military is still a path to the middle-class for many Americans, it was for me, but even that is being robbed from our future generations.

Military personnel used to cook foods for the front-line soldiers and military mechanics once kept vehicles running in the motor pools; those are just two examples of good Federal jobs that have been taken over by contractors. And the truth is that the companies who assumed took those jobs from our young men and women are not doing it for less: They are not saving the American taxpayer a dime!

And what they are costing us are good jobs!

But for the time being, the Federal government does employ over two-million Americans. These are great jobs and each one represents an opportunity for the employee to achieve and maintain a middle-class lifestyle.

Federal employment is the factory floor of the future. And just like unions once fought to maintain the dignity of the American worker, every Federal employee and citizen of the United States who sees the value of having a strong and growing middle-class in our country must fight to keep Federal jobs for Federal employees.

Either that or there will be no path to the middle-class left in America!

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