Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

"Booming" Economy Means More Bad Jobs and Faster Race to the Bottom
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
02 Aug 2023
"Booming" Economy Means More Bad Jobs and Faster Race to the Bottom

For the past 30 years, no matter which party has been in power, the US economy has produced more and more “bad” jobs – because the Race to the Bottom is ruling class policy.

Originally published in Black Agenda Report.

A Brookings Institution study  shows 44 percent of all American workers toil in “low-wage” jobs, with median earnings of $18,000 a year. Most of them are adults in their prime working years, whose paychecks provide the main sustenance for their families, 20 percent of which live at below 150 percent of the poverty line. Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented  in low-paid employment, but more than half of these bad jobs are held by whites.

The corporate consensus, shared by its monopolized media, is that the economy is booming – which only confirms that the Race to the Bottom is ruling class policy, no matter how much the “liberals” at places like Brookings bemoan the hardships inflicted on the working poor.

Working class precarity is built into the system, by design. Another study, measuring the Job Quality Index , shows that the proliferation of low-paid work isn’t a hangover from the 2008 meltdown, but a characteristic of late stage capitalism. "In 1990, the jobs were pretty much evenly divided" said one of the creators of the index. "We discovered that 63% of all jobs that were created since 1990 were low-wage, low-hour jobs." The data show the Race to the Bottom has accelerated for U.S. workers under both Republican and Democratic administrations:  the elder and younger Bushes, Clinton, Obama, and now Trump, who is running for re-election on the strength of the economy. 

The duopoly system is a magnificent mechanism of corporate rule and working class ruin. When only corporate parties are permitted to govern, and corporate mouthpieces monopolize the media, capitalist-inflicted misery is made to seem natural and inevitable. The highly-educated researchers at Brookings can imagine only one way out of the downward spiral for those localities where bad jobs are the norm: “attract and grow more high-wage jobs by drawing new companies in and helping existing companies grow and increase their productivity.” In other words, more capitalism, of the more socially-conscious kind. But clearly, the stock market favors precarity capitalism, which it rewards with high returns, and punishes capitalists that don’t immiserate their employees or farm them out to low-wage contractors. 

Low-wage labor mixes uneasily with higher-paid employment in the so-called success-story cities, as well. According to Brookings , bad jobs number “nearly one million in the Washington, D.C. region, 700,000 each in Boston and San Francisco, and 560,000 in Seattle. Addressing the challenge of low wages combined with high housing prices is a key issue in these places.”

Brookings concedes that education isn’t the answer. “There simply are not enough jobs paying decent wages for people without college degrees (who make up the majority of the labor force) to escape low-wage work,” say the researchers. Lots of low-paid workers already have degrees. “Fourteen percent have a bachelor’s degree and an additional 8% have an associate degree,” according to the study.

Whole sectors have become precarity zones, where 75 percent or more of the workers earn low wages: “These include retail sales workers, cooks and food preparation workers, building cleaning workers, food and beverage serving workers, and personal care and service workers (such as child care workers and patient care assistants),” the latter being mostly female and heavily Black and brown.

The Brookings think-tankers are not permitted to think outside the tank. But they are required to make broad statements of good societal intentions. “The goal of economic development should be to support growth that is shared and enduring, increase the productivity of firms and workers, and raise standards of living for all,” said the Brookings Institute’s Amy Liu. But of course, that would mean forcing capitalists to restructure their practices for the common good, or – the truly unthinkable! – putting the economy in the hands of the workers that create the wealth, while ensuring that everyone that wants work, has it. 

The proposition is quite simple, but unmentionable in the thought-free bubble imposed by monopoly media and rigged search engine algorithms. Therefore, the capitalist narrative always ends with a question mark for the hobbled intelligentsia employed to rationalize the social hell created by their think-tank funders. “’Where will the good jobs come from?’ is perhaps the defining question of our contemporary political economy,” the Brookings researchers write – and then leave it at that, having no answer that the Lords of Capital would approve. 

The Race to the Bottom fuels consolidation of wealth and power at the Top. Socialism is the only answer, a socialism rooted in the self-determination of all the peoples subjugated by capitalism since its emergence in colonialism and slavery – half a millennium of unrelenting, merciless, genocidal theft of land, labor and peoplehood.  The “democratic” nature of this socialism lies not in ballots supervised by capitalist ruling class servants, but in the mass movement to dethrone the thieves that claim to “own” the world’s resources – a class so numerically tiny that we know the top guys’ names, starting with Bezos. Any thoroughgoing redistribution, no matter how chaotic, would be more “democratic” than the current oligarchy, and nothing could be more irrational. 

The rules and definition of democracy will be decided by people in motion in the process of building a new world.

Glen Ford was a co-founder of Black Agenda Report and its first Executive Editor.

Black Workers
Late Stage Capitalism

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Stop Confusing the Fight Against Racism with Neoliberalism
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Stop Confusing the Fight Against Racism with Neoliberalism
23 November 2021
The electoral appeal of anti-Black racism is a constant in the U.S.
Looking for space for General Baker Institute, 2016 - Photo: Roy Singham
Roy Singham
On the Road from Detroit to South Africa: Black Radical Internationalist Traditions
23 November 2021
Roy Singham reminisces about his work with the late General Gordon Baker, Jr.
A History of Unemployment and the Search for Solutions
Philip Harvey
A History of Unemployment and the Search for Solutions
21 April 2021
The only time the United States has experienced real full employment was during World Wars I and II.
Black Worker Centers: Building Workplace Power in the Communities
Matthew Cunnington-Cook
Black Worker Centers: Building Workplace Power in the Communities
21 April 2021
As organized labor deals with the defeat at Amazon in Alabama, another type of base-building power beckons.
Popular Resistance: Small Acts Can Become a Power No Government Can Suppress
Margaret Flowers
Popular Resistance: Small Acts Can Become a Power No Government Can Suppress
03 March 2021
Together, we can demand that one of the wealthiest nations on earth upholds its responsibility to provide the basic necessities for its people.
Freedom Rider: No Human Rights in Texas
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: No Human Rights in Texas
24 February 2021
The people of Texas suffer unnecessarily from bad weather because their state puts oligarchs first and does not recognize the human right to health
Nightmare Years Will Repeat Themselves – Until the People Kick Out the Cabal
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Nightmare Years Will Repeat Themselves – Until the People Kick Out the Cabal
04 February 2021
To take on the corporate imperial racial capitalist state, we need a Black-led movement that puts politics in command and names the Democratic perp
Neither Class Reduction nor Race Reduction: Toward a Revolutionary Left Framework on an Age-Old Debate
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Neither Class Reduction nor Race Reduction: Toward a Revolutionary Left Framework on an Age-Old Debate
27 January 2021
White supremacy and class struggle must thus be taken together as parts of a whole social system rather than separate categories of oppression.
Julian Assange and the Great Reset
Stephen Sefton
Julian Assange and the Great Reset
04 November 2020
More than a decade of blatant lies and slander have promoted the false belief that Julian Assange is guilty of some criminal offense.
Seize the Time or Face Fascism
Riva Enteen
Seize the Time or Face Fascism
24 June 2020
Either we seize the time and bring power to the people, or we must be prepared to face overt fascism.

More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr
    07 May 2025
    Black people who are among the rich and famous garner praise and love, and so do those who are in distress. But concerns for the masses of people and their struggles are often missing.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LETTER: Thank you, Mr. Howe, Ama Ata Aidoo, 1967
    07 May 2025
    Ama Ata Aidoo lands a knock-out blow to white neocolonial anti-African revisionism.
  • Jon Jeter
    The Only Language the White Settler Speaks: Ohio Police Say Grieving Black Father Avenges Son’s Slaying By Killing One of Theirs
    07 May 2025
    The killing of Timothy Thomas in 2001 ignited Cincinnati’s long-simmering tensions over police violence. This struggle continues today, forcing a painful question: When justice is denied, does…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment
    07 May 2025
    "DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
    07 May 2025
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Brittany Friedman. Friedman is assistant professor of sociology at the University of…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us