Saint Louis Job News & Opportunities St. Louis Front Page is a weekly news publication, with daily updates, spotlighting attractions, events, business and hospitality in St. Louis, Missouri and Southwest Illinois. St. Louis News Community Info St. Louis Job News St. Louis CitySide Business News St. Charles News Southwest, IL News Fairview Heights,IL Art Gallery News Hotel News Restaurant News Style St. Louis Not Just For Kids   Downtown Map America's Center Busch Stadium Gateway Arch Savvis Center Laclede's Landing Old Courthouse Union Station Washington Avenue   Metropolitan Map Casinos Clayton, MO Grand Center Grant's Farm Forest Park Kimmswick, MO MO Botanical Garden Soulard St. Charles, MO West Port Plaza Transportation Lambert Airport How To Reach Us: St. Louis Front Page P.O. Box 1354 St. Louis, MO 63188 Voice: 314-771-0200 Fax: 314-771-0300 To submit news, contact: editor@slfp.com To advertise, contact: advertising@slfp.com National Job Quality is Declining ST. LOUIS, (PRNewswire) July 3, 2005 - A new measure of job quality indicates that the long-term trend has been toward lower-quality jobs in the United States, where quality is defined in terms of employment shares and wages by industry or occupation. The national and state-by-state job quality study was produced by the Center for Business Research at Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business. "Nationally, the rate of decline in job quality has been relatively modest," said Tom R. Rex, associate director of the center. "Had no erosion in job quality occurred between 1969 and 2003, the average wage in 2003 would have been 5 percent higher than the actual figure." The manufacturing sector has been a major cause of the national decline in job quality over the last 35 years. "Many manufacturing industries pay above-average wages, but their workforces have declined as a share of total employment," Rex said. "In contrast, some low-paying industries, particularly in retail trade and services, have experienced strong employment growth." Between 2000 and 2003 -- a period marked by an economic recession in 2001 and a slow recovery that extended into 2003 -- job quality nationally decreased at a rapid rate. "The sizable decline in job quality in recent years fits the historical pattern: most of the losses in job quality have occurred during economic recessions and in the recovery phase following recessions," Rex explained. "By industry, a loss of jobs in the above-average-paying manufacturing sector was the largest cause of the decrease in job quality between 2000 and 2003," Rex observed. "By occupation, a considerable number of jobs in the high-paying management occupational group were lost." Most states experienced a decline in job quality between 2000 and 2003, with few having a change that was much different from the national average. The best-performing states were the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Wyoming and Alaska. "Little pattern can be seen in the change in job quality over this period except that states with the weakest industrial mixes generally had the strongest gains in industrial job quality," Rex said. The highest job quality in the nation in 2003 was along the Atlantic Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, with very strong job quality in the District of Columbia and Massachusetts. Outside of this region, the strongest job quality was in Illinois and Colorado. Job quality was weakest in most of the mid-section of the country, stretching from the northern Rocky Mountains through the Great Plains and the South. However, the states with the lowest job quality were Nevada and Hawaii, both with a high percentage of low-paying tourism jobs. Archived: 18- to 34-Year-Olds, Low Earners Tops Among Job-Hoppers 'Class of 9/11' Finds Patriotism Is Not Enough to Work for Government Laptops, Not Autos, Tempt Today's Job Seekers Survey Highlights Mothers as Ideal Workplace Leaders Worker's Compensation Reform Bills Protect Missouri Jobs Employment Rebounds in St. Louis Missouri Quality Jobs Act to Create Jobs, Spur Economic Growth Smurfit-Stone Anticipates Job Growth at New Headquarters in St. Louis County Worker Confidence Drops Sharply in February Employment Market Minority-Owned Businesses Boost Local Economies in Tight Job Market Workers Rate Bosses Highly, But Say They Can Do the Job Better U.S. Households Led by Single Mothers and Displaced Homemakers on the Rise Job Market Continues Growth As Worker's Confidence Levels Increase    The Saint Louis Front Page is owned and maintained by the Moore Design Group for the sole purpose of disseminating news and information about the Metropolitan Saint Louis area. Text or graphics may not be copied, rewritten or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission. For more information, contact editor@slfp.com All rights reserved world wide © 1996 - 2008 Moore Design Group .