<div><div class="yn-story-content">
                <p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-7718" title="office-worker-1" src="http://mit.zenfs.com/102/2011/03/office-worker-1.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="210" />We've <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/news/yblog_thelookout/bs_yblog_thelookout/storytext/decline-of-middle-wage-jobs-may-reduce-value-of-college/40556641/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101201/ts_yblog_thelookout/for-jobs-market-the-incredible-shrinking-middle">written before</a> about the job market's incredible shrinking middle. Thanks to mechanization and offshoring, a growing number of new jobs are either high-wage, high-skills, or, especially, low-wage, low-skill. But middle-wage, middle-skills jobs--both white-collar, like clerical work, or blue-collar, like craftwork--are fast disappearing.</p>
                <p>When we last wrote about this trend, we noted that the shift makes a college degree more important than ever.  But the truth may actually be closer to the reverse. Columnist Paul Krugman of the New York Times <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thelookout/bs_yblog_thelookout/storytext/decline-of-middle-wage-jobs-may-reduce-value-of-college/40556641/SIG=1267hjsk5/*http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html?ref=opinion">writes today</a> that many of the jobs now lost to computers and foreign workers involve things like legal research or software design--meaning that in the U.S. job market, a college education is no longer any guarantee of steady employment. Indeed, Krugman points to research sugggesting that "high-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are, if anything, more 'offshorable' than jobs done by low-paid, less-educated workers."</p>
                <p><span id="more-7715">The point, Krugman argues, that investing in education--a central policy objective of the Obama administration--will not, by itself, solve the country's job woes.  In addition, he argues that the jobs economy will benefit from increased income support, via union organizing and universal health care:</span></p>
                <p></p><p>We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.</p>
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            </p></div></div><p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a class="rssreadon" rel="external" title="Decline of middle-wage jobs may reduce value of college" href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110307/bs_yblog_thelookout/decline-of-middle-wage-jobs-may-reduce-value-of-college" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110307/bs_yblog_thelookout/decline-of-middle-wage-jobs-may-reduce-value-of-college</a></p>