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Laid-off U.S. workers take any job they can

Most forced to settle for much lower pay

By: Christopher S. Rugaber

Posted: 08/25/2012 12:26 PM | Comments: 0

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economic recovery hasn’t felt much like one even for people who managed to find new jobs after being laid off. Most of them have had to settle for less pay.

Only 56 per cent of Americans laid off from January 2009 through December 2011 had found jobs by the start of this year, the Labor Department said Friday. More than half of them took jobs with lower pay. One-third took pay cuts of 20 per cent or more.

The figures would be even lower if people who could find only part-time jobs were included in the total.

The report provides an illustration of the job market’s weakness well after the Great Recession ended in June 2009. It also documents that while the economy has added nearly three million jobs since the recovery began, many pay less than those that were lost.

And it points to the challenge for U.S. PresidentBarackObama,who’sseeking re-election with unemployment at 8.3 per cent. No president since the Second World War has faced re-election with unemployment above eight per cent. It was 7.8 per cent when Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Laid-off workers always have a tougher time finding new jobs than do people who quit. But since the government began tracking such data in 1984, people who lost jobs in a recovery haven’t had it as tough as they did in the one that began three years ago.

And the pay cuts in their new jobs usually aren’t so deep.

For example, in 2003-2005, a period that included a slow recovery, nearly 70 per cent of those who were laid off found jobs. More than half who found full-time work in that time did so at equal or higher pay.

The government compiles data on laid-off workers every two years. The report covers only people who had worked at least three years in the same job before being laid off. In doing so, it focuses on those who had stable careers before they lost work.

They are people like Andrew McMenemy, who used to make $80,000 a year as a computer systems administrator. He was among the 80 per cent of his firm laid off in March 2010.

Now, he makes $9.15 an hour, providing tech support for Apple. The job offers no benefits. He works from home in Pennsylvania. "I’m going to be 53; I have to live at home with my father," McMenemy said. "I made more when I worked in high school."

About 6.1 million people with at least three years on the job were laid off in the three years ending in 2011, the government’s report said. That’s down from 6.9 million in the previous report, which covered the 2007-09 period. But it’s still the second-highest total since 1984.

Though the proportion of laid-off workers finding jobs has improved since the 2007-09 period, "by no means are they back to a normal level for a recovery," said Henry Farber, an economics professor at Princeton University.

— The Associated Press

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