Viewing McJobs From the Flip Side
17th October 2013
The headline read, “We Have Become a Nation of Hamburger Flippers: Dan Alpert Breaks Down the Jobs Report.” Seems that Alpert, the managing partner of New York investment bank Westwood Capital, LLC, was unhappy that most of the jobs created in July were for low-wage workers.
Albert wasn’t alone. Plenty of people have been complaining that most of the recently-created jobs have been for low-wage workers. These people have apparently forgotten who it was that lost jobs in the Great Recession: It was low-wage workers. College educated people were hardly impacted at all, especially those that headed households and had several years of work experience.
The recession hit less educated, and therefore low-wage, workers far more than it hit high-human-capital workers, and the discrepancy persists, even as analysts complain about hamburger-flipping jobs.
And there are a lot more people who can only do burger-flipper jobs than there are highly-educated potential professionals. We don’t need more jobs for the brains in Silicon Valley; we need them for the average Joes on Main Street.