There is no more pressing issue facing cities and society today than how to create high-quality, family-supporting jobs. As manufacturing jobs have faded—today only 5 or 6 percent of American workers are engaged in direct factory production—the job market has cleaved into an advantaged and affluent third of high-paying knowledge, professional, and creative jobs; and a nearly 50 percent share, of low-paying, insecure, and precarious service jobs.
A recent report by researchers at the London School of Economics and Newcastle University identifies the scope of the more and better jobs problem in the U.K. The report has useful implications for American cities and urban leaders who, in the absence of federal and in many case state policies, are increasingly having to go it alone to upgrade low-paying jobs and implement more inclusive economic development strategies.
The number of urban Britons in need of jobs is striking. In the United Kingdom’s 12 largest cities, 3.5 million people either cannot find work, or cannot find as much work as they like. An additional 2.4 million people have jobs, but don’t consider those jobs high quality. This “more and better jobs gap,” as the researchers refer to it, affects a total of 5.3 million city dwellers in the U.K., comparable to the working age population of London (5.9 million). In the US, there are as many as 65 million Americans currently employed in low-paying service jobs. And that does not include the millions more that are unemployed and those trapped in extreme poverty.
[For more on this story by Richard Florida, go to https://www.citylab.com/equity...-better-jobs/549935/]
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