economic wreckage she sensed was coming ... she went back to college ... it didn't help .. food boxes 28,000 .. 250,000 going to 300,000

As wages fall, workers slip from middle class | By Tim Jones | Tribune national correspondent | July 25, 2007

Amid the demise of manufacturing jobs, the birthright of a nice home, college for the kids is under siege

... which is why she went back to college to pick up a degree that would insulate her from the economic wreckage she sensed was coming.

It didn't help. When the end neared for her auto parts assembly plant last year, Seaton, 52, walked off the loading dock, armed with a bachelor's degree. In January she began work as a mental health caseworker for a third less money.

Seaton is paid $9.45 an hour, less than what her 21-year-old daughter earns as a truck dispatcher.
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... thousands of manufacturing workers who lost their jobs are absorbing the bitter reality that their new jobs almost always pay substantially less than their old ones did.

Dayton's poverty rates are soaring, and the middle-class birthright of a comfortable home, college for the kids and maybe a cabin by the lake is under siege. Mortgage foreclosure rates are among Ohio's highest. A Dayton food pantry operated by the AFL-CIO handed out 28,000 boxes of food in 2005. Last year that number exploded to almost 250,000, and labor officials expect the figure to top 300,000 this year.

"This is not a union issue, it's a community issue," said Kristie McElfresh, vice president and director of AFL-CIO Community Services of Greater Dayton. "The gap between the haves and have-nots is huge, and there's nobody in the middle."
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Dayton is among dozens of cities, big and small, where wages have slipped or stagnated while poverty rates have jumped. A common remark heard from industrial workers around the Midwest is echoed by 33-year-old laborer Ken Fitzwater, who expects to lose his $30-an-hour job at a Dayton Delphi plant later this year.
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