With unemployment still high at 8.8 percent, many feel fortunate to land any job. But not all jobs contribute the same to economic growth. Employers may be hiring more, but they are hiring disproportionately in retail and other service-sector positions with low wages and few benefits.
High-paying fields like real estate and finance accounted for 40 percent of the 8.8 million jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 14 percent of the jobs created in the year that followed.
Lower-paying industries such as retail constituted 23 percent of jobs lost but almost half of the recent growth.
This shift "could make it much harder for workers to find family-supporting jobs," said Annette Bernhardt of the National Employment Law Project, who analyzed the employment data. Even in the "jobless recovery" after the 2001 recession, high-paying industries accounted for nearly one-third of new jobs in the year after the recession ended.
Elizabeth Murphy, a recruiting manager for the retailer Crate & Barrel, said she was receiving three times as many applications as she did a year and a half ago. The increase reflects, in part, a surge in applications from unemployed real estate agents, accountants, and other professionals.
"In the past, college grads would say, 'I won't even talk to you if you're paying less than this,' " Murphy said.
Not every retail employee is struggling.
At Nordstrom Inc., the department-store chain, commissioned salespeople are highly trained, and top performers earn six-figure salaries, spokesman Colin Johnson said.
But most retailers are under pressure to trim their expenses - and labor, the biggest expense after inventory, is one of the few costs they can control.
