Facts about WAGES

Guaranteed Jobs = Higher Wages

So long as millions of us are unemployed, wages will remain depressed, because employers can always play on our desperation. Only by finally eliminating unemployment can we guarantee decent wages for everyone.

Wages are falling:

Our real wages have been falling since 1973, despite huge increases in corporate profits and in productivity. Average hourly earnings are now about 20 percent lower than they were in 1972.

...partly because we're becoming "contingent":

The temp firm Manpower Inc. now hires more people in the course of a year than any other private employer. Temp jobs grew by about 200 percent during the 1980s. And the number of workers working part-time, but who want to be working full-time now totals about 5 percent of the workforce.

U.S. workers have among the lowest wages in the industrialized world:

We earn less than Scandinavian, Western European, and many Asian workers. And the level of wage inequality in this country is closer to that of Tanzania than it is to Europe.

There's plenty of money to go around:

It's been a fat few years for the super-rich in this country. In 1982, the nation's richest 400 people had an average net worth of $230 million each.

By 1995, they averaged $993 million. It's time working people saw their net worth quadruple!

Congress recently increased the minimum wage -- but not nearly enough.

The minimum wage will rise to $5.15 an hour later this year. But it would have to rise to $7 an hour just to return it to the value it had in 1968. We can do better than we did in 1968:

We're demanding a $10-an-hour minimum wage.

Facts about JOBS

There aren't enough jobs to go around:

According to the U.S. Labor Department, one out of four workers are either unemployed, involuntarily working part-time, or working full-time at poverty wages.

The unemployment rate is high:

...especially considering we've been in a multi-year economic "recovery." Official unemployment is about 5 1/2 percent, but when you add in those who are not counted because they've given up looking, as well as those who are underemployed, the real figure is closer to 10 percent. For African Americans and Latinos, even "official" unemployment hovers around 10 percent.

Layoffs are rising:

Between 1987 and 1989, 6.7 million workers were laid off.

From 1993-1995, the number jumped to 10.1 million workers.

There are jobs being created, but...

they're not nearly as good as the jobs we're losing. A Labor Department study of workers laid off between 1993-95 found that 40 percent found jobs that paid less or were part-time, 26 percent still hadn't found a job, and only 25 percent found jobs that paid the same or better.

Joblessness costs our nation a lot of money:

A study by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a one percent rise in unemployment would increase the federal deficit by $39 billion. Over five years, a one percent rise in unemployment would add a whopping $323 billion to the deficit.

Plus, the welfare costs we pay because of unemployment (including welfare to corporations, supposedly to encourage job creation) costs us an additional $242 billion.

By comparison, a guaranteed job is a great deal for the taxpayer:

With the $242 billion we save in welfare costs, we could create a lot of jobs:

About 10 million of them. And those are living wage jobs, ones that pay at least $24,000 a year ($10 an hour plus benefits).

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