• Description

The decline in the economy's ability to create good jobs is related to deterioration in the bargaining power of workers, especially those at the middle and the bottom of the pay scale. The restructuring of the U.S. labor market -- including the decline in the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage, the fall in unionization, privatization, deregulation, pro-corporate trade agreements, a dysfunctional immigration system, and macroeconomic policy that has with few exceptions kept unemployment well above the full employment level -- has substantially reduced the bargaining power of U.S. workers, effectively pulling the bottom out of the labor market and increasing the share of bad jobs in the economy.