MIM NOTES No. 201 January 1, 2000 The changing economy and class structure: No sign that the white working class is hurting as labor aristocracy claims by MC12 There are good reasons to oppose the ever-deeper plunge of imperialism into the oppressed nations of the world, of which the WTO and other treaties are just a superstructural manifestation. But the protests over the World Trade Organization include a strong labor aristocracy component, as evidenced by big unions and other supporters of Amerikan workers who complain that global trade takes away Amerikan jobs and hurts Amerikan workers. We will briefly review some trends in the Amerikan economy, with an eye toward how globalization is supposed to be hurting the Amerikan working class. At any one time it's hard to see what's new and what's old in the economy. This article looks at the changes in the labor force in the last 20 years in two ways. First, we look at the overall composition of the labor force in terms of occupation and earnings. That lets us see where the most growth in jobs and wages is taking place. Second, we look more closely at the situation young workers of the last two decades. The changing labor force Table 1 shows the number of workers in each occupational category, their average earnings, and the change in each category from 1978 to 1998. The occupational groups are shown from those that grew the most in size to those that shrank the most in size. So there are 8 million more sales workers in 1998 than there were in 1978, while the number of machine operators, assemblers and inspectors shrank by about 1.8 million. The total number of employees has increased by 33.7 million, which is a 34% increase, and their average pay is up 21%. The labor aristocracy has two beefs here. The first is the 13.4 million more sales and service jobs, which pay less than the average. MIM points out that earnings in these two occupation groups is up 34% and 24% respectively over the last two years, however, even though they remain below the average. The second labor aristocracy beef is that earnings has fallen for three of the blue-collar occupation groups. On this point they are right, but it's just not that bad. First, the pay declines are relatively small compared to the pay increases in other occupations. Second, these three blue-collar occupation groups have added only 3.4 million jobs, or about 10% of the total new jobs. The slow growth, or decline, of these blue-collar jobs means these jobs are becoming less and less important, so their stagnating pay doesn't hurt as many people. Less than 20% of all workers are in these occupational groups. Finally and maybe most importantly, white men in these occupational groups did not see even these small declines. White men in precision production, craft and repair, transportation and material moving, and handlers, equipment cleaners and laborers -- all had small increases in earnings over the last 20 years (not shown). So blue-collar workers have suffered some losses in the last two decades, but not the white men in that group. At the same time, the number of employees in the executive, administrative and managerial group has increased 71%, or 7.5 million, and their earnings are up 18%. And the number of people in the professions (from teachers to lawyers and doctors) has increased 58% or 7.3 million, and their earnings are up 27%. This growth is bigger than the growth in sales and service jobs, and the earnings for these people are very high. Young Workers Another way to look at changes in the labor force is to look just at the situation of young workers over time. Since at any one time this group is new to the labor force, they always represent what's new at least in some respects. Here we discuss the change in the situation of 25-29 year-old workers from 1978 to 1998 -- this is early in the careers of most workers. The information here pertains to non-"Hispanic" Black and white men and wimmin who specified an occupation. We refer to the most common five occupational groups, the average earnings (adjusted for inflation), and the education level of these workers. This information is in Table 2. Let's look at young white workers first. The most common occupational group among white men in this age group in 1998 is high-skill blue-collar jobs (19.3% of white men). The average pay of these workers is $25,557 per year, which is 16.4% less than the pay was for these workers in 1978. That's close to what white men who did not finish college were paid overall in 1998 ($28,782). So, the labor aristocracy has a beef: the best-paid blue collar workers aren't getting paid as much at the beginning of their careers as they used to, and white men without college degrees have a harder time getting good jobs. To some degree they are right again. But the overall trend is not that way. While the earnings of white men without college degrees have gone down 11.4%, the earnings of those with college degrees have gone up 10.8%. The three high-paying categories in the white men's top five -- professionals, sales, and managers, who average about $34,000-37,000 at the start of their careers -- combined account for 40.5% of the white male workers in this age group. In 1978 these categories represented 36.1% of young white men. So while the pay is going down for some workers, these are becoming more scarce over time, and the high-paying jobs are an increasing part of the white male labor force. As we saw in the labor force as a whole. Overall, all this translates into a 3.6% drop in the annual earnings of 25-29 year-old white men. This is hardly the catastrophe the labor aristocracy advocates describe. And of course it's only part of the story. (One thing to consider about this comparison -- 25-29 year olds over 20 years -- is the extent to which it misses those high-education occupations where the training takes people into their late 20s or 30s, such as doctors.) White wimmin are another crucial part. Young white wimmin earn much more now than they did 20 years ago. This is partly because they work more in the labor force -- more often work full-time, delay marriage and childbearing, and so on. But they are also in better occupations and getting paid more. Labor aristocracy boosters who also cling to patriarchal views whine about wimmin who "have" to work now to "make ends meet." This is true for some poor wimmin, but the great majority of white wimmin is not in this situation at all -- especially if they are married, which most are. Look at the top five occupation groups for young white wimmin in 1998. Every one of them has experienced double-digit earnings growth in the last 20 years. The best paid group, the managers, are now 15.8% of these wimmin (they were less than 7% in 1978), and they earn almost $30,000, which is 43% more than they did 20 years ago. In two categories -- professionals and the managers -- white wimmin on average earn more than Black men or wimmin in any of their top five occupational groups. The overall earnings increase for young white wimmin has been 32.3%, and that extends to those with and those without college degrees, although those who finished college have had more growth. This great increase in the earnings of young white wimmin more than balances out the small decrease in young white men's earnings. If there is any group in the U$ (besides First Nations and undocumented immigrants) that is taking it on the chin in the last 20 years, it is Black men. All of the top-five occupational groups for young Black men have had falling earnings in the last 20 years, with the most common occupations having the largest losses. In 1978, the top two occupation groups for young Black men were high-skilled blue-collar jobs -- such as machine operators, inspectors, precision production, and the like. In 1998 the biggest category is the low-level blue-collar jobs paying $12,351 per year. While white men in the professions have had a 15.2% increase in earnings, and white wimmin professionals have had their earnings go up 24%, Black men in these occupations have just treaded water. With or without college degrees, young Black men are earning about 7% less than they were in 1978. Underlying all this -- and absent from this government data on the "labor force" -- is the prison boom, which is the cite of exploitation of labor on a large scale, especially for Black and Latino men. The real average earnings of Black men are lower than those reported here because of prisons. The story for Black wimmin is a mix. Black wimmin blue-collar workers and secretaries earn less than they did 20 years ago, but the other top occupational groups are earning more. Black wimmin have the biggest gap in earnings between those who finished college ($27,612, up 14.8%) and those who didn't ($13,717, down 1.1%). Finally, we have to add briefly that this is all based on reported earnings. Other benefits, retirement pensions, interest and dividends, inheritances, rents, and all that are not included here. All of these other sources of wealth are of course disproportionately collected by white Amerikans. So these numbers may be useful for comparison over time, but they don't tell the whole income or wealth story. In terms of the global trade issue, there are several important points to draw from all this. First is that all of these workers are making head-and-shoulders above the great majority of the world's workers. Who's up and who's down may have an effect on political consciousness, but MIM does not look at any of these pay levels and conclude that these workers are being exploited on a world scale. Inequality and oppression do exist in the U.$., but economically everyone who's got a legal at least minimum-wage job is not exploited in our book (see MIM Theory 1, 10, and "Imperialism and Its Class Structure in 1997," by MC5 for more of this analysis). The second major point is that overall shifts in the class structure are not working against white Amerika. These workers are not being driven out of their jobs by global trade. Instead the occupational structure is shifting in favor of higher-paid jobs for white workers. Note: Data for this story are taken from the March Current Population Survey, conducted by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Summaries from this data and downloading options are available at: http://www.bls.gov/cpshome.htm. The data are based on a sample survey of about 50,000 households per month, excluding prisoners as well as people in the military.