It is the jobs in the middle of the pay spectrum that are missing. The economy has lost more than 200,000 teaching, construction and community-service jobs since 2010 — all occupations that pay between $40,000 and $60,000 per year. This means that people who are reasonably well-educated but don’t have highly technical skills of graduate degrees are stuck.
The jobs they’re actually qualified for don’t exist, and the really well-paying jobs all require skill sets they don’t have. Such workers end up underemployed — overqualified for the jobs that they can get and paid lower wages as a result.
