AlterNet: WorkPlace: Spirit-Crushing 'McJobs' Are Putting an End to Upward Mobility

The media and the pundits spend a lot of time focusing on the massive increase in compensation for top jobs.

But if we really care about strengthening the national economy, it's time to focus on the other side of the story -- what's happening in the low-wage labor market. In a report we've written (with Heather Boushey and Rachel Gragg), "Understanding the Low-Wage Labor Market in the United States," we find that more than 40 million jobs -- about 1 in 3 -- pay low wages.

What is low-wage work? Surprisingly, there's no official definition. One commonly used formula defines a low-wage job using the federal poverty threshold: $20,444, or $9.83 an hour, in 2006. But plenty of people agree the federal poverty line is outdated and has limited appeal for describing low-wage work in today's economy.

To avoid these problems, we've adopted a new definition of low-wage work that uses what we call a social-inclusion approach and, importantly, takes inequality into account. Under this definition, a low-wage job is one that pays substantially less than the job held by a typical male worker -- that's any job paying less than $11.11. How many are like that? Forty-four million.

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