Most Americans know there are jobs out there, but the common belief is that many pay too little to warrant getting up in the morning.

The Clinton administration is concerned that the perception is keeping it from getting credit for improving the economy."We've added more private-sector jobs in the high-wage industries since January 1993 than in the previous five years combined," Labor Secretary Robert Reich said. "This belies the myth that the new jobs are bad jobs."

Even with the nation's unemployment at 5.8 percent in October, the lowest level in four years, the administration has had little success in changing the widespread notion about the quality of the more than 5 million jobs created since President Clinton took office.

The opinion that most new workers are flipping hamburgers has taken hold on Main Street.

"We don't really have the kind of data that would allow for a definitive statement," said Martin Regalia, an economist with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "One side says the jobs are not all bad, the other side says the jobs are not all good. Both are right to a degree."

Regalia said the new jobs tend to be in the service sector, "because the service sector is more important than ever to our economy."

One difference in the job market, economists say, is that recent colleges graduate are far less likely than their parents to remain with the same employer until retirement.

"You're not working for the same company for an entire career. In many cases they don't have the same benefits packages," Regalia said. "They are often with smaller start-up companies. Is that good or bad? It's neither. Just remember that IBM, Polaroid and Apple Computer were once start-up companies."

Many inexperienced people are finding jobs, and should expect lower-paying positions, said Murray Weidenbaum, director of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis and President Reagan's first chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

"Typically, new jobs tend to be more in the nature of entry-level positions. That's where unemployed people get their experience and move up the ladder if they're successful," he said. "So the fact that new jobs are disproportionately relatively low-paying I don't find very surprising."

But Jerry Jasinowski, president and chief economist of the National Association of Manufacturers, said the public perception about the quality of new jobs is wrong.

"People are uninformed," he said. "I think it's unfamiliarity with what's going on in the modern economy."

The number of high-quality service jobs directly tied to manufacturing has been increasing as industry spins out non-manufacturing activities as part of downsizing, Jasinowski said.

"And we have created hundreds of small firms with high-paying service jobs who serve manufacturing exclusively."

View Comments

Reich said a majority of new jobs are "higher-than-average wage managerial, professional and technical jobs in industries that are traditionally low-wage industries." He said they "still pay better than the average for all jobs."

One trouble, Reich said, is that even though most new jobs pay better than average, "we still see increasing disparities in wages and benefits among the 110 million old jobs. If you have a good education and good skills, you are earning good wages. If you don't, you're on a downward escalator and that's the way it's been for 15 years."

Dean Baker of the labor-funded Economic Policy Institute is one of those who suggests that many of the new jobs are less than desirable.

"It's clear that most of them are not very good jobs," he said. "The best way to get the picture on that is to see what's going on with median wages, and they continue to fall. Most of the jobs are in the service sector and the lowest-paying part of the service sector."

Join the Conversation
Looking for comments?
Find comments in their new home! Click the buttons at the top or within the article to view them — or use the button below for quick access.