The Atlantic
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics projections, the US economy remains on track to generate 15 million new jobs over the next decade. 6.8 million of them will be high-skill, high-wage work in the knowledge, professional, and technical sectors of the economy. The other half will be much lower-paying, low-skill work in the routine service sector of the economy. More than 45 percent of the US workforce -- 60 million workers -- already do this kind of work, and they earn just half of what factory workers make -- and only a third of what professional, technical and knowledge workers are paid.
If we're serious about creating good, family-supporting jobs, we have no choice but to upgrade those service jobs and turn them into adequate replacements for the blue-collar jobs that have been wiped out. We did it 70 or 80 years ago when we transformed manufacturing jobs from low-paid, dangerous work into high-paid jobs; we must do it again.
