Are There Any Statistics For The "Worth" of A Job Lost/Gained

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was hearing the statistics on the radio for jobs in Illinios. Of course they tell you the job growth/loss rates.

But here’s what I mean by my question.

It may say (and I’m making these figures up for simplicity), 1000 jobs lost but 2,000 were gained.

OK sounds good, but what if all 1,000 jobs lost paid, $50,000 a year and those gained were all part time or full time minimum wage jobs gained.

So you may be in reality comparing apples to oranges.

To lost 1,000 jobs at 50K a year and gain 2,000 jobs at $8.25/hr is not a good thing, but you could spin it as such.

I’m sure this extreme doesn’t happen in real life, but I made up the numbers to explain clearly the point I’m searching for.

What I’m lookiing for is some place that can tell me if the gains in jobs are “real” or just political speak.

I ask as I’ve been out of work since August and had a great job and truthfully, I have had no issues getting work, but all of it is part time or temporarly work for minimum wage or a few cents more.

Are these stats, actually going to offset a loss of a my 67K a year job with my 9/hr Christmas help job?

2

The Bureau of Labor collects the kind of information that makes it possible to weigh the different kinds of jobs gained or lost (for example, see this chart, with “service industry” vs. “professional workers,” etc.), but I think the actual earnings analysis is quarterly, rather than every month. I don’t think the month-by-month statistics you hear reflect actual earnings. You can analyze the data yourself, though. Here’s Illinois.

3

You’re asking about what economists call underemployment. I don’t know of any published statistics, but that’s a good term to base your searches on.