Decent Jobs Forum Can the American Economy Produce More Decent Jobs?

Decent Jobs Forum Can the American Economy Produce More Decent Jobs?

The continuing economic crisis involves not just unemployment, but also a failure of the American economy to create enough decent jobs with middle-class wages and adequate benefits.   The U.S. economy is creating a small number of well-paid, high-skill jobs at the top and a much larger number of poorly-paid, low-skill jobs at the bottom, with few jobs in the middle. Can this trend toward the polarization of the job market be reversed?  How do we create more decent jobs in America? To address these questions, the Next Social Contract Initiative invited a number of leading scholars and public intellectuals to contribute their thoughts to our Decent Jobs Forum.  This week, the Decent Jobs Forum features the contributions of Thomas Kochan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. Read their Decent Jobs Forum essays by clicking here.