Latest jobs report is a tale of two sectors

But averages don’t tell the whole story. A worker who loses a high-wage manufacturing job faces an uphill struggle getting the training and experience required to change career course and take advantage of newly created high-wage jobs. Last year, Congress cut some $12 billion in financial aid for students trying to finance higher education.

“You have to worry about folks who are displaced by that sector,” said Jared Bernstein, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Because their next job is likely to pay 15 to 20 percent less and have far fewer benefits.”

As manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to low-wage overseas markets, some workers in skilled service industries fear that their jobs may be next. U.S. employers have had some success in outsourcing higher-wage jobs, but it has become increasingly difficult, according to Zandi.

“Wages have risen sharply in places like India, for example, so there isn’t as much of a cost benefit for outsourcing that kind of high-skilled labor to India,” he said. “So it’s not putting the same kind of pressure on wages that it was a few years ago, because the entire global labor market for skilled labor is very tight.”

And while the average wage for new U.S. jobs appears to be rising, the trend has little impact on the overall financial health of American workers, said Bernstein.

“The factor we’re talking about is a fairly minimal factor compared to the wage trend for incumbent workers — something like 90-plus percent of whom keep their job month to month," he said. “You’ve had pretty healthy wage gains for the last six to eight months. The problem is that inflation has eaten them up — and more — until about three to four months ago.”

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