Prometheus 6

Executive Summary (pdf) 

Between 1979 and 2004, real gross domestic product (GDP) per person in the United States increased about 60 percent. This report asks how well the U.S. economy has done translating this economic growth into good jobs.

The report defines a “good” job as one that offers decent pay (at least $16 per hour or about $32,000 per year), employer-paid health insurance, and a pension. In 2004 (the most recent year for which data are available), only 25.2 percent of American workers had a job that met all three criteria.

In both 1979 and 2004, about one-fourth of workers were in jobs that qualified as “good” by the definition used here. The basically unchanged good jobs rate across the two years suggests that the economy has failed to convert long-term economic growth into an expanding supply of good jobs.