five occupations on this list—janitors, sales clerks, secretaries, general office clerks, and cashiers—were expected to account for more than 10 percent of total employment in 1995 and almost 14 percent of all new employment. Only six of the twenty-five occupations in question required education beyond the secondary level, and only three—teaching, engineering, and nursing—required a college degree. Jobs for computer systems analysts would increase by 90 percent (already a drop from the I00 percent increase estimated in the mid-seventies for the years between I978 and 1990), but only 225,000 new jobs, at most, would result. On the other hand, there might be as many as 850,000 new jobs for janitors— considerably more than the total number of new jobs (660,000) opened up by the five occupations with the highest rate of relative growth. There might be as many as 750,000 new jobs for sales clerks; 580,000 for waiters and waitresses; 470,000 for nurses' aides and orderlies; 460,000 for truck drivers: and 350,000 for auto mechanics. It was expected that 165,000 new positions for computer programmers would open up during the late eighties and early nineties, whereas the demand for fast-food workers and kitchen helpers would produce 525,000 new positions.

A recent study by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison strengthens the impression of persisting unemployment, declining wages and salaries, and a rapid growth of low-wage employment. Forty-four percent of the new jobs created between 1979 and 1985, according to these authors, paid poverty-level wages, while the creation of high-wage professional, technical, and managerial jobs slowed to a mere 10 percent, a third of the pace maintained in the years from 1963 to 1979. ^* Part-time jobs, moreover, grew twice as fast as full-time jobs, accounting for 30 percent of new positions. The increase in poorly paid employment was not confined to minorities, women, or the young. Indeed the partial elimination of the disparity in wages paid to men and to women—at first glance the only bright spot in an otherwise darkening picture—is accounted for by a

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*	Taking the high wages of 1973 as their standard, Bluestone and Harrison defined high-wage jobs as those paying more than the 1973 average. "Stated in terms of 1986 purchasing power, a low-wage job pays $7,400 or less. A high-wage job pays in excess of $29,000."

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