Welcome to the Service Economy

By Peter Rachleff

"We are moving into a service economy." How often have we heard this in the past twenty-plus years?

On Labor Day in the USA in 2006 what does this mean? What kinds of jobs do we find in this service economy? The picture, frankly, is grim. According to recent research, in a Minnesota family of four with both parents working, each worker must earn $12.00 an hour just to meet their basic needs. Of the five occupations in Minnesota with the most job openings, only one pays a median wage of more than $8.00 per hour. The two occupational groups with the most job openings are retail sales and food preparation/serving, accounting for more than one-fourth of all job openings. Workers in these industries earn an average of $7.29 an hour. In other words, most of these service-sector jobs are not family-supporting jobs.

If the service economy is actually going to "serve" us -- workers, consumers, patients, and tax-payers -- we must overturn these practices. Service-sector employers must not be allowed to spread their costs of doing business and amassing wealth onto their workers and our communities. Anything less suggests that we will be going backwards rather than forwards as we move from a manufacturing to a service economy.