2020’s emerging story: good jobs
October 14, 2018 2020 now has an emerging clear dominant issue: good jobs. As in the kind of good-wage jobs that Trump’s promise of got him elected - not “jobs” that now visibly largely are in nil-wage industries such as fast food and “tipped-wage” restaurants, historically high-schooler pocket-change jobs but now mainly are held by adults lacking any alternative of good-wage jobs. And it’s a natural for photojournalism.
With a “truth squad” of downsizing victims - “Good Jobs Nation” - now already having emerged and haunting Trump’s stops in the Midwest, good-wage jobs historically held by adults has become 2020’s clear dominant issue. “Good Jobs Nation” is a very photographable presence of this issue; unlike how, say, today’s food stamp debit cards prevent any iconic photos of suffering Americans in bread or soup lines of the type shot in the 1930s depression - a fact clearly benefiting both Wall Street and incumbent politicians.
Good-wage jobs - or the continued dire and worsening scarcity of them - easily outdoes Russia scandals, Kavanaugh’s appointment, or anything else as the dominant 2020 issue. It is easy to Google up daily news stories of big downsizings of middle-class or near-middle-class jobs - and has been throughout the past month. In industry after industry, in state after state, good jobs just have kept being downsized in droves.
The other side of the dire scarcity of good jobs shows, of course, as the huge number of adults stuck in nil-wage jobs historically only teen jobs - obviously, of course, not having good jobs to flee to!
Occupy - here, Occupy Chapel Hill (N.C.), Oct. 22, 2011 - was an early if unfocused good-jobs protest movement.
The ability of large numbers to live in encampments clearly showed they didn’t have good-wage jobs that they couldn’t afford to lose!