Labor Day highlights labor pains in Pa.

abc 27 WHTM

Labor Day celebrates the American worker, even if the numbers suggest too many of them don't have jobs.

One in four Pennsylvanians is unemployed or under-employed.Labor Day celebrates the American worker, even if the numbers suggest too many of them don't have jobs.

"Family budgets are under pressure, wages are tight, and households are doing the best they can to get by," said Mark Price, a left-leaning labor economist with the Keystone Research Center. "It's not good."

Many of those who are working aren't happy about the terms of their employment. From foreign students protesting Hershey, to employees picketing Verizon, to threatened teachers and liquor store workers, rank and file are frightened.

Price says average workers should be angry.

"Wages in Pennsylvania roughly in the last decade haven't outpaced the growth in prices, so basically people are running in place in terms of earnings," Price said. "But in the last year, CEO pay went up 24 percent."

Conservative-leaning Matt Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation calls it an economic shift that's painful and completely normal.

"When we saw the automobile come about, you had the horse and buggy makers and whip makers panicked because they were losing those jobs, but they're being shifted and that's exactly what we're seeing all around the world today," Brouillette said.

Brouillette and Price differ on what government should do now. Price says more stimulus spending will lower unemployment. Brouillette says stop spending; politicians are not job creators.

Caught in the middle are average workers, who on this celebration of labor aren't in a partying mood.

It seems a lot of companies are making profits and sitting on a lot of cash. They're not hiring, they're not spending.

Workers are doing more with less, which is good for a company's bottom line, but not for the economy as a whole.