Decline in Living Standards

Not that this is a surprise, but the New York Times reports that even those who have found work after a period of unemployment aren't feeling so cheery. 70% of those who switched fields took pay cuts; even 45% of those who stayed in the same field took cuts. And of course, they can all easily get laid off from their new jobs and face yet another search.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/business/economy/01hires.html

One worker reports, "I’d love to go back to what I was doing...But when I talk with the unemployment office here in Michigan, they tell me the chances of going back and using the same skill set I had before are pretty farfetched." Well, of course. A career with a forward path would allow this man some stability, and as Jacob Hacker describes in his book The Great Risk Shift, stability is precisely what the forces in power are intent on denying him. There is something almost vindictive in the way this is playing out, as if the plutocrats were punishing the rest of us for not being plutocrats ourselves. "Take that, loser!"

I am reminded of a quotation from Edith Wharton's great novel The House of Mirth: "If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower level." I feel that way often myself.