Approaching Labor Day tomorrow, what do we know about the American economy and the future of work? What type of labor market do we face, who has a job and who doesnt? Where are the best jobs and where have the best jobs gone? For whom does work pay the rich or the poor? How are people managing in a world of increasing economic insecurity? With an economy sporting the lowest job recovery rate since the recession of 1949 how are Americans making ends meet? Sunday mornings headlines provide some of the answers.

Jobless recovery

There are just 3.5 percent more jobs than at the end of the last recession. That is less than half the lowest of the nine previous moves a gain of 7.6 percent in the period after the 1953-54 recession. And that figure was held down by the fact that another recession, in 1957-58, had taken place by then. billig unterkunft Limerick Floyd Norris, discount hotels in LilleNew York Times

Work is in services

The share of employment represented by private-sector goods-producing industries fell by more than half, to less than 17 percent from more than 37 percent. Employment in that sector peaked at 25.2 million people in 1979. Now it is 22.4 million, even though total employment is up 50 percent since 1979. Mary Williams Walsh. New York Times

Work still pays for some of the rich

The census report, for instance, showed strong income growth last year only at the 95th percentile of the distribution, which covers families making $166,000 a year. Even at the 90th percentile, as well as the 50th and further down, according to the Labor Department, pay increases have trailed inflation over the last three years. David Leonhardt , New York Times

Women are working men are increasingly not working

Women are more likely to be in the labor force than they were 20 years ago, but men in the prime working ages of 20 to 54 are less likely to have jobs. But perhaps the most notable trend is that men and women are both much more likely to keep working than were their parents in what used to be known as the golden years. Floyd Norris, New York Times

Americans are deeply in debt

As a result, debt payments now consume 19.4 percent of the income of the average American family, and 23 percent of the families in the bottom two-fifths of families by income devote at least 40 percent of their income to debt payments.

Household debt rose to 132 percent of disposable income last year, partly because many Americans have pushed their credit card debt to the max and because many, including many high-income Americans, have piled on the mortgage debt. Last year, for the first time since the Depression, the personal savings rate for the nation fell below zero, meaning that Americans are spending more than they are earning (and are saving no money on a net basis). Steve Greenhouse, New York Times

Poverty in America: http://www.povertyinamerica.psu.edu/