[Peace-discuss] Neoliberalism in Illinois

[C. G. Estabrook]

  Chicago Tribune - November 17, 2005
  Illinois incomes sinking
  Paychecks shrink more than $6,000 since 1999
  By Barbara Rose
  Tribune staff reporter

Illinois' median family income has dropped dramatically over
the last 
six years, a sharper decline than in every other state except for 
Michigan, a new report reveals.

The result is that household incomes here--adjusted for 
inflation--have fallen back to about where they were in 1989.

These income losses, coming at a time when costs are rising for 
everything from housing to transportation, brings into sharp
relief 
the troubling shift from good-paying manufacturing to
lower-paying 
service jobs.

Job growth, even during the booming 1990s, was fueled by
lower-paying 
occupations and there's no sign this trend will reverse, the
report 
said.

Only two areas of the state--northeastern Illinois, anchored by 
Chicago, and the region south of East St. Louis--are expected to 
generate more high-wage jobs than low-wage jobs through 2012, 
according to the 94-page report, "The State of Working Illinois."

The report was developed by the bipartisan Center for Tax and
Budget 
Accountability in Chicago and Northern Illinois University with 
funding from the Joyce Foundation.

It is the first in-depth look at how the nation's fifth-biggest 
economy is faring in a global economy in which factory
jobs--which 
once supported families headed by workers with sometimes limited 
formal education--are rapidly disappearing. At the same time, job 
growth is being fueled by an expanding service industry, where
the 
pay gap is widening between low-wage, low-skill jobs and 
higher-paying ones requiring college degrees.

Median household income has fallen by 12 percent in Illinois
since 
1999. That represents a sharper loss than in any other state
except 
for the 19 percent decline in Rust Belt Michigan, which has been 
battered by job losses in the auto sector.

The Illinois decline is far higher than the nation's average
decline 
of less than 4 percent for the six-year period, according to the 
report's authors.

Illinois' median income of $46,132 in 2004, when adjusted for 
inflation, is about the same as in 1989, the report states.

The only workers who scored sizeable wage gains since 1980
were those 
with college degrees, according to the report.

The study confirms fears that many Illinois working families, 
especially minorities and women, are falling farther behind in an 
economy where good-paying jobs with benefits such as health
insurance 
are harder to find.

"It's clear we're at a very significant crossroads," said Ralph 
Matire, executive director for the Center for Tax and Budget 
Accountability. "Absolutely all net new job growth in this
state has 
been in lower-paying service jobs. Generally speaking that
means no 
health insurance benefits, no retirement, and working
full-time for 
wages that pretty much cannot support a family of four."

The report, modeled after the Washington-based Economic Policy 
Institute's biennial "The State of Working America," is
intended to 
spark a policy debate about solutions.

"Job creation is the single most important economic issue
we've got 
in the state," Illinois Chamber of Commerce President Douglas
Whitley 
said. "We have not benefited from the national recovery, and I
think 
some Illinoisans have forgotten what prosperity looks like."

Albert Eddington, 59, who raised five children in the once
prosperous 
factory town of Galesburg, Ill., is a case in point.

"At one time Galesburg was one of the best places to work," he
said, 
ticking off the names of employers who have left town, including 
Maytag Corp., which began shutting down a refrigerator plant two 
years ago.

Eddington, a lifelong factory worker, lost his $15.60 per hour
Maytag 
job a year ago. Always before, he found another factory job,
but not 
now.

"They either offer part-time work or less than $7 an hour,
everywhere 
from filling stations to restaurants to grocery stores," he said. 
"You just have to put your chin up and keep going. I don't really 
have any prospects now to speak of."

Robert Hillyer, 35, another former Maytag worker who earned
$14.75 
per hour, went to welding school hoping to get a good job, but
so far 
no luck. "There's not much around this area, I'm finding out," he 
said.

In Chicago, Deneen White, 41, who worked for 22 years at
Frederick 
Cooper Lamps on the city's Northwest Side until the plant shut
down 
in August, has been filling out applications at fast-food
restaurants 
and department stores. Their wages won't match the $12 per
hour she 
made at Cooper, but she'd be happy to have a job.

"I've even gone to day labor [sites] and waited all day without 
getting anything and wasted my bus fare," said White, who has
lost 35 
pounds from worry.

Katherine Parks, 35, earned $11.50 per hour bagging potpourri for 
shipping at a distribution center on the Northwest Side until
she got 
laid off a year before the business closed in the late 1990s.
Now she 
works from her North Side home as a child-care provider in a 
state-subsidized program, earning $2.50 per child per hour,
without 
benefits.

"It gets hard at times," said the mother of three, who cares
for as 
many as 12 children, working seven days a week. "You're basically 
barely making it."

She said she holds out hope that her union, Service Employees 
International Union, which is negotiating with Illinois
officials for 
better pay, will improve her situation.

Union membership as well as education boosts real wages,
according to 
"The State of Working Illinois."

"From a worker standpoint, unions are one of the few things
that led 
to higher wages and better benefits," said Matire. "There's
still a 
role to play for unions. The question is, how do we take that
role 
and make it positive" without hurting economic competitiveness.

Caring for children and the elderly are among the fastest-growing 
occupations, yet also are among the lowest-paying, said Ann
Ladky, 
executive director of Chicago-based advocacy group Women
Employed. 
Women are disproportionately represented in lower-paying
industries, 
the report said.

"It's absolutely necessary that we figure out how to improve the 
quality and rewards of these jobs because they're very
important to 
families," Ladky said. "There's just way too many women who are 
working full time and not earning enough to support themselves."

The report documented a workforce that is growing more
diverse, with 
minorities representing nearly one-third of workers last year, up 
from about 16 percent in 1980.

Yet African-Americans and Hispanics have much higher rates of 
unemployment and earn far less than whites and Asians, even
when they 
have comparable educational levels, the report found.

"There clearly still is discrimination operating in the
marketplace," 
Matire said.