Low-Wage Jobs Replace Middle-Income Work, Study Finds

Jobs that can sustain a middle-class lifestyle are disappearing, as low-wage jobs take their place, according to a new study by the National Employment Law Project.

Three-fifths of all jobs lost during the recession paid middle-income wages , while roughly three-fifths of new jobs created during the economic recovery pay low wages , NELP found. Both economic forces and government budget cuts are causing this deficit of good jobs, according to the study.

Three notoriously low-paying industries -- food services, retail, and employment services -- account for 43 percent of all jobs created during the economic recovery, while better-paying industries have failed to recover, according to NELP. The median retail worker gets paid $11 per hour , the median food service worker gets paid $10 per hour and the median waiter or waitress gets paid just $7.69 per hour, according to the study.

Many of the losses in well-paying jobs came from state and local governments, which have cut 485,000 jobs since February 2010, according to the study. Many mid-wage government workers that have been laid off during the economic recovery include teachers and police officers , according to the Hamilton Project.

But not everything can be blamed on the recent recession; the middle class has seen a hollowing out for years.

While low-wage and high-wage jobs have grown since the beginning of 2001, mid-wage jobs have plunged over the past decade, according to the NELP study. There also has long been downward pressure on wages in mid- and low-wage jobs, with those jobs' median real wages falling since 2001. Meanwhile, the median real wages of high-wage jobs spiked during the same time period.

Without government action, this trend is self-reinforcing, according to some economists. In part because low-paid workers cannot afford to pay for big-ticket items such as houses and cars, there is less consumer demand for employers to hire more mid-wage workers in industries such as construction and manufacturing. Workers condemned to low-skill, low-paid work also may be losing their skills, making them less employable for better-paying jobs later on.

(Hat tip: The New York Times' Catherine Rampell .)