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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
JUDY WOODRUFF: The latest government jobs report shows the American labor1 market moving into its strongest hiring pace in years. Employers added 217,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate remained at 6.3 percent, its lowest level since September 2008.
May also marked an important moment: the highest total payroll2 level in U.S. history, all in all, a seemingly solid report. But those looking closely say it's premature3 to celebrate much, especially when at least 10 million people are still looking for work.
NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman has the story, part of his ongoing4 reporting Making Sense of financial news
PAUL SOLMAN: Today's headline: May was the fourth straight month employers added more than 200,000 jobs, the last time that happened, more than 14 years ago. Yet the unemployment rate didn't budge5.
PAUL OSTERMAN, MIT Sloan School of Management: Good news and bad news.
PAUL SOLMAN: You know, it seems like every month, I interview someone like you on the first Friday of the month, and they say, good news, bad news.
PAUL OSTERMAN: That's right. There's a reason for that, the good news, 200,000 jobs in a month added. That's great. The bad news, the level of pain out there has not changed. There's still about 20 million people who are either unemployed7, working part-time jobs, but would like full-time8 jobs, or not in the labor force, but would like to be in the labor force. That number is just stable, and it's a lot of pain.
PAUL SOLMAN: The unemployment rate stayed constant, but that's because we added 200,000 jobs, added 200,000 people to the labor force.
PAUL OSTERMAN: That's right. But think of the population and think of the number of people in the population who are working. That tells you how healthy the economy is, how good the job market is. That number plummeted9 in the recession, and has barely climbed back up. We're not at pre-recession levels.
PAUL SOLMAN: Indeed the so-called employment-to-population ratio has been below 60 percent for five years now, down almost one-seventh from the ratio pre-recession, to a low last seen in the Reagan recession of the early '80s.
Now, the economy is adding jobs. In fact, May marked a milestone10: Five years after the end of the great recession, we have finally regained11 the nearly nine million jobs that were lost.
But Osterman, who has researched the quality of the new jobs, says they represent no progress in wages for the economy as a whole.
PAUL OSTERMAN: Twenty to 25 percent of all adults who are working are in poverty level jobs, jobs that if they worked full-time, full year, wouldn't raise them above 125 percent of the poverty rate for a family of three.
PAUL SOLMAN: A recent report by the National Employment Law Project found that lower-wage jobs in sectors12 like restaurants, retail13 and administrative14 services have accounted for the lion's share of the job gains since 2009.
Christine Owens runs the group.
CHRISTINE OWENS, Executive Director, National Employment Law Project: They accounted for 39 percent of job growth in the recovery. Four out of every 10 jobs that were added were in those three very-low-wage industries.
PAUL SOLMAN: According to this same study, all low-paying industries accounted for less than a quarter of job losses during the recession, but they have accounted for almost half of job gains since.
Put simply:
CHRISTINE OWENS: We have gained far more jobs in low-wage industries than we did in mid-wage and high-wage industries.
PAUL SOLMAN: In May, for example, some of the biggest job gains were in health care. Seems promising15. Yet many of those jobs are low-paying.
CHRISTINE OWENS: Jobs like home care. Home care is one of the fastest-growing jobs in our economy and it is the job that is expected to grow the most over the next 10 years. It pays poverty wages.
PAUL SOLMAN: Paul Osterman elaborated.
PAUL OSTERMAN: Health care is a very bifurcated16, polarized industry. You have got the doctors and nurses at the top. You have got the home health care aides. You have got the CNAs, the certified17 nursing assistants, at the bottom. Those bottom jobs are going to grow immensely because of the retirement18 of the baby boom, because of the demand for home health care. And so a growth in health services, while expected, doesn't necessarily lead to better jobs at all.
PAUL SOLMAN: Consider the entire economy, says Osterman, and what the average job has been paying.
PAUL OSTERMAN: If you look at wage growth in the economy, over the last 12 months, it's been about 2.1 percent. That's barely ahead, barely ahead of inflation, so people are not getting ahead in terms of their earnings19 in this recovery.
PAUL SOLMAN: And if you look at where so many of the new jobs cluster, in non-supervisory work, today's employment report says that wage growth actually trailed inflation over the past year.
The bottom line for May, then: more workers and more jobs, but not necessarily the kind of jobs that signal anything like a robust20 recovery.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Paul details more employment numbers online, including the under-reported stat of those not in the labor force, but say they want a job. See how high that has risen on Making Sense.
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1 labor | |
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
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2 payroll | |
n.工资表,在职人员名单,工薪总额 | |
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3 premature | |
adj.比预期时间早的;不成熟的,仓促的 | |
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4 ongoing | |
adj.进行中的,前进的 | |
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5 budge | |
v.移动一点儿;改变立场 | |
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6 economist | |
n.经济学家,经济专家,节俭的人 | |
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7 unemployed | |
adj.失业的,没有工作的;未动用的,闲置的 | |
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8 full-time | |
adj.满工作日的或工作周的,全时间的 | |
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9 plummeted | |
v.垂直落下,骤然跌落( plummet的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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10 milestone | |
n.里程碑;划时代的事件 | |
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11 regained | |
复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 ); 赢回; 重回; 复至某地 | |
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12 sectors | |
n.部门( sector的名词复数 );领域;防御地区;扇形 | |
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13 retail | |
v./n.零售;adv.以零售价格 | |
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14 administrative | |
adj.行政的,管理的 | |
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15 promising | |
adj.有希望的,有前途的 | |
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16 bifurcated | |
a.分为两部分 | |
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17 certified | |
a.经证明合格的;具有证明文件的 | |
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18 retirement | |
n.退休,退职 | |
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19 earnings | |
n.工资收人;利润,利益,所得 | |
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20 robust | |
adj.强壮的,强健的,粗野的,需要体力的,浓的 | |
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