Brewed Fresh Daily

Can the middle class be saved? That’s the provocative title of a recent piece in The Atlantic Monthly, which takes an in-depth look at the challenges posed by the nation’s economic woes.

Writes its author, Don Peck:

“It’s hard to miss just how unevenly the Great Recession has affected different classes of people in different places.” 

From 2009 to 2010,he said, wages were essentially flat nationwide—but they grew by 11.9 percent in Manhattan and 8.7 percent in Silicon Valley. In the Washington, D.C., and San Jose (Silicon Valley) metro areas, job postings in February of this year were almost as numerous as job candidates.

In Miami and Detroit, by contrast, for every job posting, six people were unemployed. In March, the national unemployment rate was 12 percent for people with only a high-school diploma, 4.5 percent for college grads, and 2 percent for those with a professional degree.

The story looks at what MIT economist David Autor calls a trend toward “employment polarization.” Autor found job losses have been “far more severe in middle-skilled white- and blue-collar jobs than in either high-skill, white-collar jobs or in low-skill service occupations.”

From 2007 through 2009, Autor says, total employment in professional, managerial, and highly skilled technical positions was essentially unchanged. Jobs in low-skill service occupations such as food preparation, personal care, and house cleaning were also fairly stable.

Overwhelmingly,he said, “the recession has destroyed the jobs in between. Almost one of every 12 white-collar jobs in sales, administrative support, and non managerial office work vanished in the first two years of the recession; one of every six blue-collar jobs in production, craft, repair, and machine operation did the same.”

Take a read, and let us know what you think.