美国政府周五发布的一份报告显示，9月份失业率从8月份的4.1%升至4.2%。按照历史标准来看，这仍然相当低。但这种稳定似乎是虚幻的，因为我们似乎陷入了一个劳动力市场，而不是增加高薪工作，而是由低收入职位主导。难怪购买力下滑、工人不满。
A US government report Friday showed that the unemployment rate ticked higher to 4.2% in September from 4.1% in August. That’s still pretty low by historical standards. But the stability seems illusory, given we seem to be stuck in a labor market that rather than adding high-paying jobs, is dominated by lower-earning positions. No wonder purchasing power is slipping and workers are dissatisfied.
作者：乔纳森·莱文（Jonathan Levin）对劳动力市场的普遍解读是，这只是哼。正如人们所说，总体而言，招聘可能低迷，但至少裁员较少，失业率相对较低。那么，为什么世界大型企业联合会周二发布的消费者信心月度调查显示，9月份消费者信心跌至2014年以来的最低水平呢？超过五分之一的受访者告诉世界大型企业联合会民意调查机构，工作“很难找到”，这是大约十年来最多的一次，不包括2020年和2021年初的疫情高峰。
By Jonathan Levin The prevailing read on the labor market is that it’s just ho-hum. As the argument goes, hiring may be sluggish overall but at least layoffs are muted and joblessness is relatively low. So why did a Conference Board’s monthly survey of consumer confidence released Tuesday show that sentiment fell in September to the lowest since 2014? More than a fifth of those surveyed tell Conference Board pollsters that jobs are “hard to get,” the most in about a decade not including the peak of the pandemic in 2020 and early 2021.
怎么回事？我给你一个理论：现有的工作未能满足工人的期望。9月份私营部门新增的46，000个就业岗位中，薪资低于平均水平的行业占了50，000个。换句话说，收入高于平均水平的行业裁员约4，000人。多年来，这种情况一直是如此，一点一点地改变着美国就业人口的构成，使其变得更糟。
What’s going on? I’ll give you one theory: The jobs that are available are failing to meeting workers’ expectations. Below-average-paying industries account for 50,000 of the 46,000 total private sector jobs added in September. In other words, above-average-paying industries shed about 4,000 jobs. And this has been the state of affairs for years now, little-by-little altering the composition of American payrolls for the worse.
最初，其中一些是被追赶的。白领工作更适合在家工作安排，并且在Covid-19期间得到了发展，因此一些回归均值是意料之中的。然而，高收入行业的持续停滞表明一系列政策错误，使企业处于高度不确定性的状态。
Initially, some of this was catch up. White-collar jobs were better suited to work-from-home arrangements, and they gained ground during the Covid-19 years, so some reversion to the mean was to be expected. Yet the continued stagnation in higher-earning industries points to a series of policy errors that have left businesses in a state of heightened uncertainty.
白宫一项决策欠妥、推出过程杂乱无章的关税政策，令企业在招聘时趋于谨慎。随后，美国和以色列对伊朗发动战争，引发能源冲击，波及旅行和航运等依赖燃料的行业。这些政策还推高了长期借款成本，使消费者和企业融资更加昂贵。结果是，尽管第二季度国内生产总值按年率计算增长2.2%，周期性经济部门仍显疲态。
An ill-advised and haphazardly instituted White House tariff policy prompted caution in hiring. Then, the US-Israel war with Iran spurred an energy shock that’s rippled through fuel-dependent travel and shipping industries, among others. And the policies pushed longer-term borrowing costs higher, making consumer and business financing more expensive. As a result, the cyclical economy is flagging, despite gross domestic product that expanded at a 2.2% annualized pace in the second quarter.
达拉斯联邦储备银行9月28日发布的月度制造业调查显示，一名受访者是这样描述的：支撑经济的两大支柱是人工智能和医疗保健。前者通过数据中心建设激增带来贡献，而后者则因人口老龄化、需求增加而扩张。在这两者中，医疗保健显然已成为劳动力市场的主导力量；从绝对数量看，增长主要来自居家健康护理员和个人护理员，护士的贡献相对较小。
Here’s how one respondent put it to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its monthly manufacturing survey released Sept. 28: The two items underpinning the economy are artificial intelligence and health care. The former is contributing through the surge in construction of data centers, while health care has expanded to meet the demands of an aging population.
需要明确的是，医疗保健行业的总体薪酬仅略低于平均水平。但近期招聘偏向薪酬较低的岗位，风险在于，即使这些岗位的招聘也可能减少，尤其是在该法案规定的首批大规模医疗补助削减措施于明年生效之际。
Among the two, health care has clearly been the dominant one in the labor market, with the raw numbers driven by home health and personal care aids, and nurses to a smaller degree. To be clear, the health sector pays only slightly-below average overall.
低薪岗位占主导地位这一点，在其他统计数字中也清晰可见。例如，过去两年，主管和非生产岗位的就业人数基本持平，只有普通一线生产岗位在扩充人员。
But recent hiring skews toward the lower-paying tiers, and the risk is that even that hiring may fade, especially with the first major Medicaid cuts stipulated in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act going into effect next year. The dominance of lower-paying jobs is visible in other statistics, too.
好的一面是，裁员人数并未增加，而且在经历了约2021年至2025年的一段长期下滑后，平均每周工时似乎正在有所回升。劳动力市场没有明显恶化，却也没有变得更好。美国人一直在等待一个转折点：高薪岗位回归、招聘解冻、劳动者议价能力恢复。但这一切并未发生，结果是美国1.36亿个私营部门非农岗位的整体质量发生了极其细微的侵蚀。
For instance, supervisory and non-production payrolls are essentially flat over the past couple years, and only rank-and-file production roles have been staffing up. The upside is that layoffs aren’t increasing, and average weekly hours seem to be rebounding somewhat after a long decline from about 2021 through 2025. The labor market hasn’t demonstrably changed for the worse, but it’s failed to get better. Americans have been waiting for an inflection point for higher-paying jobs to come back, hiring to thaw, and worker bargaining power to return.
（特朗普政府砍掉约31.7万个联邦政府岗位，也无助于改善这一状况。）就业结构变化是平均时薪增速放缓的原因之一；目前平均时薪同比仅增长3%，而同期据估算通胀率约为3.6%。
And it hasn’t happened, the result being an ever-so-subtle erosion of the overall job quality among the 136 million private nonfarm jobs in America. (The Trump administration’s elimination of about 317,000 federal government jobs hasn’t helped matters, either.) The shifting mix is one part of the reason why average hourly earnings growth is slowing, up just 3% year-over-year in an environment in which inflation was estimated to be running around 3.6% for the same period.
难怪如此多美国人感到绝望。他们想要的是能帮助他们跟上生活成本上涨的好工作。这类工作供应短缺，而且几乎没有迹象表明情况即将好转。
It’s no wonder that so many Americans are despondent. They want good jobs that help them keep up with the rising cost of cost living. Those are in short supply, and there’s little evidence that a turn is in the cards.
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