Bussines

Job creation
Quality control
What does a “bad job” mean?
Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition
THE unemployment rate, as many Americans are painfully aware, is 9.1%. For some groups, such asyoung people, the figure is twice that. Under the circumstances, it might seem that the United States is in no position to be snooty about jobs.
Yet an argument has emerged that American politiciansmust focus on job quality, not just quantity. In general, any job is better than no job, but it is true that some jobs are dangerous, distressing, or fail to put workers above the poverty threshold.That last is a particular concern: on September 13th the Census Bureau announced that in 2010 the poverty rate was 15.1%, up from 14.2% in 2009.
In the spotlight is Texas. Its governor, Rick Perry,is the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and he brags that since June 2009 Texas has created more than 40% of America’s net new jobs. The number is real, but criticssay that the accomplishment is smaller than it appears. Some of them argue that many of the jobs are mediocre minimum-wage affairs. In fact, only about 9.5% of hourly-paid workers in Texas earn thefederal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less, though that does mean that Texas is tied with Mississippi for the highest proportion of workers in this position. Median incomes in Texas are below thenational average, and it has one of America’s highest poverty rates.
As it happens, though, most of the jobs created in Texas during the past two years have been pretty good. One way to see this is tobreak the numbers down by sector. Texas added 296,800 jobs between June 2009 and June 2011. Just under a third were in education and health care, and about a quarter were in professional services.Natural resources and mining added 45,000 jobs. Government hiring, including military growth, brought in 44,500. Leisure and hospitality, where minimum-wage positions are most common, added 28,900...