There was a big miss with the latest employment report. The addition of 74,000 jobs produced the weakest employment report going back to January of 2011. Yet part of this is not a surprise given the weak retail sales over the holidays at the expense of cash strapped American consumers. If you dig deep into the data you find a continuing pattern of low wage employment taking over the nation. This trend is accelerating as wealth inequality reaches record proportions. When the Great Recession struck many good paying jobs were washed away in a bathtub of corporate financilization that has truly set the country on a fast track to economic inequality. Austerity for the public and corporate welfare for Wall Street. Even the “Wolf of Wall Street” still lives in a multi-million dollar home in California while fleeced investors take a walk down memory lane. Low wage jobs are here to stay. This might be stunning for older Americans but young Americans are faced with this once the minted college degree paid by debt is picked up. What does it say that the vast majority of the top 10 job sectors in America will pay $35,000 or less?

Low wage America

The latest BLS jobs report was a big disappointment. It frankly caught the market off guard because they were used to the juiced up stock market of 2013. Of course, not much of the gains going to the financial sector or even the highly speculated real estate market are trickling down to working Americans. The lords of finance are sucking out every penny from the real economy and are living high on the hog with 75 percent of wealth controlled by the top 10 percent of earners in our country.

Here is an interesting look at the projected top employment sectors:

Source: BLS

All of the top growth jobs pay less than $35,000 per year aside from registered nurses. What is interesting is the top jobs are the following:

-1. Personal care aides -2. Registered nurses -3. Retail salesperson -4. Home health aides -5. Food preparation

In other words, we are heading to an economy catering to the old (that are largely broke) with young workers making peanuts and just enough to purchase a Happy Meal for dinner. Is it any wonder then that 1 out of 3 Americans has zero dollars saved to their name? That the plan for retirement for most is close your eyes and hope Social Security is enough to get by.

Demographic changes are also tweaking what we see in the unemployment rate:

Somehow something like 10 million Americans are “missing” from the labor force. If these people were put back into the data calculations we’d be looking at the unemployment rate at 11 to 12 percent. So of course, myopic views are more focused on how strong the portfolios of the top one percent of our society are doing. That is also how you have a peak in food stamp usage coinciding with a peak in the stock market.

Looking at the latest jobs report, we see that the bulk of employment was part-time in nature in retail and temp help:

Source: ZeroHedge

Of course the financial press is trying to make this a one-off incident blaming it on the snow and slower retail sales since they don’t want to pay attention to the growing army of working poor Americans. You know, the 47 million on food stamps, the 1 out of 3 with no savings, and the massive number of young Americans making peanuts while they are in massive student debt. This is the recipe of low wage capitalism with a touch of cronyism for those on Wall Street.

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