The State of Working America,by Mishel,L.,Bivens,J.,Gould,E.,& Shierholz,H.

Reviewed by: Kevin T. Leicht, Department of Sociology, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA DOI: 10.1177/0730888414534943

This contribution is the 12th edition in a long line of very high-quality presentations on the overall health of working Americans by the Economic Policy Institute. These editions appear once every 2 years and provide a veritable compendium of anything scholars and policymakers would want to know about how working Americans are doing. This 12th edition places special emphasis in different chapters on the effects of the great recession (2008–2010, or up to now if you're a working American) while still emphasizing many of the basic trends of the past 30 years that were robust before, during, and after the recession itself.

Much of the terrain covered here will be familiar ground to Work and Occupations readers. The recession capped off what the authors refer to as a lost decade of stagnant wages, unstable incomes, flat or declining economic mobility, and pathetic job growth. They rightly point out that many of these lost decade trends were well underway before the lost decade even started. And we decided to do this—the policy choices made by our politicians and economic elites produced most of the rising inequality, bad labor markets, and poor economic prospects that we see—not technological change, not market rewards (why not just say God and be done with it?!?), not virtue, not saving, not high IQ's, and (since we're trotting out all the excuses) not sun spots! All of this is meticulously documented in hundreds of readily usable tables and figures, most of which come from publicly available sources (more on that part below).

As if having all of this information in one readily available source isn't enough, the authors also provide a few very valuable simulations and tidbits that show just how far American workers have fallen. For example, I was shocked to learn that the median earning family with children worked 577 more hours in 2007 than they worked in 1979, all for the privilege of earning less, working at less-stable jobs, and greater economic insecurity. That's 14 more weeks of work to go economically downhill or (at best) stay in place. Between 1973 and 2011, the 10.7% growth in real hourly compensation lagged almost 70 points behind the growth in worker productivity, and a vast majority of that gap was shifted to compensating elites and high-wage earners. The United States is third from the bottom of a list of 20 advanced countries in the median wealth per adult, at the very bottom in the ratio of earnings at the 10th percentile to earnings at the median, and at the very bottom in the effects that tax and transfer programs have in reducing the relative poverty rate. Wealth inequality is so high that there is no point in talking about significant wealth holding among 80% of American workers. And finally (a point I've made in prior research), fully 80% of this inequality is within gender and racial groups and not between them. Taken together, the cumulative effect is not a pretty picture. It is a devastating portrait of the cumulative effect of conscious neglect on the part of the American political class and their apologists.

But what is most shocking about this digest is the cumulative effect that reading it from front to back has on the reader. The prose is very accessible. The figures are eminently readable. The claims about the relative insecurity of American workers are irrefutable. These are not recent developments, though the jobs and income numbers coming out of the great recession are truly appalling. We in the United States are becoming a less-developed country, almost by the minute, and largely by choice.

What I'm left with at the end of the volume are three questions: (1) How long can this go on? (2) How does this affect the fortunate few of us who have stable jobs, rising incomes, and investments? and (3) Where's the outrage? Of the questions that I think a volume like this could answer in the future, the question about the effect of this inequality and instability on the rest of us who are fortunate enough to have good jobs and advanced educations is probably the most relevant. At some level, the sheer levels of suffering, groping, anxiety, poverty, lack of opportunity, and the anger resulting from it have to be harming the rest of us in ways large and small. The 13th edition of The State of Working America will probably present statistics as bleak as those in this edition. The new question will be, what price are we all paying?