Happy Labor Day
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Economy, JobsLabor Day was once an important day to recognize the contributions of working Americans (and reward us schlubs with a day off). The holiday is now treated as an end-of-summer celebration complete with barbeques, beer, pennant races and Fantasy Football drafts.
But allow me to take one moment to link to this Chicago Tribune article briefly covering a Rutgers University study on the state of the modern American worker.
Not surprisingly, there are some bleak points – namely that 10% of our workforce is unemployed or underemployed and the median weekly income of workers has not increased in real terms in eight years. But there’s some good news too. Employer support for childcare and employee health and wellness programs are on the rise and workplace safety is improving.
We definitely have room for improvement. And although we can debate whether free-market solutions or government programs are our best course of action, I think we can agree that the backbone of America is the American worker (whether machinists or doctors or teachers or film producers). Keeping America strong means keeping employment opportunities strong. And what better day to remember that than on Labor Day?
This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 and is filed under Economy, Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Something we can agree on, Alan. It’s one reason I like the idea of something like the PWA being revived and investment in necessary infrastructure repair instead of tax cuts.