Why We Need the Government to Create Not Just Jobs, but Good Jobs

Monday, 10/17/2011 - 12:21 pm by Richard Kirsch

A new book exhausts all the private sector possibilities, ultimately showing why the government has to ensure decent wages for all.

The millions of underemployed Americans today, working part-time or in jobs significantly beneath their skill level, underline a persistent feature of our workforce, starting long before the Great Recession: one out of four jobs pay sub-standard wages. Good Jobs America, a new book written by Paul Osterman and conceived with co-author Beth Shulman before her death, tackles this other half of the jobs crisis: the need to create more good jobs, with wages that can support a family.

A great strength of the book is the authors’ creation of new data on low-wage jobs, bringing to light how little so many of us bring home from our work. The authors are exquisitely cognizant of the current policy and political climate that looks skeptically on the ability of government to intervene in the “power and correctness of the market.”