Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9411150012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At least part of the reason might be found in a report, "On Shaky Ground: Rising Fears About Incomes and Earnings," from the National Commission for Employment Policy. It is a result of a 22-year study tracking the earnings and hours worked by groups of men and women from 1967 to 1989.
It won't surprise many to learn that there is a growing economic divide, with high-wage blue-collar jobs disappearing and opportunity booming in information-based technology - which requires more education and retraining for new skills.
Many people are doing just fine, thank you. Sixty-seven percent of the workers had higher standards of living at the end of the '80s than at the beginning. But the rate of upward mobility had slowed. Seventy-nine percent had seen an increase in living standards in the decade of the '70s.
The commission reports that average male earnings in the 1980s were 4 percent lower than the 10-year average of the 1970s. Women's average wage rates were 9 percent higher in the '80s, though the report fails to note they still lag far behind men's.
White males can be assured that, as a group, they're in no need of affirmative action. Women's earnings did go up in the 1980s, but 80 percent of the increase was due to the fact that they worked more hours - nearly 50 percent more than the annual average the previous decade.
Black men, meanwhile, lost a lot of ground in the '80s. Nearly three-fourths had full-time, year-round employment through the 1970s, while only half did in the 1980s - a decade that also saw their overall earnings fall 17 percent. Some enjoyed an increase, of course, but only half the two-thirds whose earnings rose through the '70s.
Thirty percent of black women were economic losers in the '80s, but that was good news, sort of. That was down from 40 percent the previous decade.
The percentage of families on "declining standard of living trajectories" went from 21 percent in the '70s to 33 percent in the '80s, the report shows. Pretty clearly, a return to an '80s-style economy would do nothing to strengthen today's stressed families.
by CNB