Does Everyone Have Two Jobs?
A critical look at the left’s latest economic talking point.
Do Americans have too many jobs? Democratic Socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said last week that “unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs” and “people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said people are “working minimum wage jobs that won’t support them or they’re working two, three or four jobs.”
But Bureau of Labor Statistics data show only a small minority of Americans work multiple jobs. That percentage has been around 5% of working Americans since 2010, though it was higher before then. Last month 7.6 million, or 4.9%, of the 155.5 million working Americans had multiple jobs.
Are people working “60, 70, 80 hours a week”? Rarely. But for a brief dip during the recession, private-sector employees have worked an average of 34.2 to 34.6 hours a week since BLS began tracking the data in 2006. The average stood at 34.5 hours in June.
BLS considers 35 hours a week “full time,” so working 70 or 80 hours would be equivalent to two full-time jobs. Only 360,000 people worked two full time jobs in June—0.2% of the workforce. There may well be people working 60 hours a week or more on one job—but if that were common, the overall average for hours worked would be well above 34.5.
Ms. Warren also claims people are “working minimum wage jobs that won’t support them.” No doubt some people work minimum-wage jobs, particularly younger employees getting their first work experience. That they have access to such jobs is a positive rather than a negative. But the fixation on minimum-wage jobs is increasingly disconnected from reality. With economic growth accelerating and the demand for workers increasing, anyone driving by fast-food restaurants or other retail establishments will see signs seeking employees for $10 to $12 an hour, well above the $7.25 federal minimum wage and most state minimum wages.
On a year-over-year basis, wages for all employees increased 2.7% in June. That’s a good, not a great, number. But individuals working production and nonsupervisory jobs in the retail and hospitality-and-leisure sectors did much better. These sectors have the lowest average hourly wage of any sector the BLS measures, at $15.87 and $13.82 respectively.
In June, wages increased 3.8% year over year for retail-sector employees. It was their highest percentage increase since 2001 using June as the base year. Wages in the hospitality-and-leisure sector, including restaurants, rose 3.3% year over year—on top of a 4.3% increase in 2017. In a fast-growing economy, the demand for labor increases, and more employers have to pay above the applicable minimum wages to get employees.
As the economy continues to improve, so will jobs and wages for American workers. For progressives like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Warren, the difficulty will lie in attempting to explain away the benefits of economic growth for American workers.
Mr. Puzder is a former CEO of CKE Restaurants and author of “The Capitalist Comeback: The Trump Boom and the Left’s Plot to Stop It.”
