Dan Walters wrote in the Bee that, “a third of California’s employed workers are ‘low-wage’ and their ranks are growing according to a new study from the Center for Labor Research and Education at University of California’s Berkeley campus.” Walters also discussed the legislature’s passion for a minimum wage hike as a means to fix this problem. We can do better.
California manufacturers pay an average $78,000 salary and those wages adjusted for inflation have grown by almost 40 percent since 2000. A growing manufacturing sector would create tremendous opportunities for the low-wage ranks often providing a gateway to the middle class. We can fight to attract manufacturing investment and jobs and grow the same industry that helped so many California families follow their dreams in the eighties with aerospace and in the nineties with tech manufacturing.
We looked at the growth and declines of California’s job sectors since 2000 and as you see below, California’s manufacturing sector is on a steady decline versus other sectors, often giving way to industries that pay lower wages.
