This is a repost, read the complete article here: http://www.aft.org/column/promise-career-and-technical-education

On the surface, the latest jobs report from the Department of Labor is good news—an estimated 214,000 jobs were added in October, which translates into 54 months of job growth, the longest streak of uninterrupted private sector job growth in our nation’s history.

However, a deeper look at those numbers shows that while more Americans may be finding jobs, wages are standing still. As the Economic Policy Institute reports, earnings for the wealthy few have surged upward while paychecks for the vast majority of Americans have been falling behind.

And people feel it deeply. According to exit polls after the recent midterm election, 70 percent of voters said that their family’s financial situation has stayed the same or gotten worse over the last two years.

What this means is our nation’s ever-widening income gap is growing, and the promise of America—that idea that when you work hard, you get a decent shot—is slipping further out of reach for too many.

In those exit polls, voters also expressed frustration about the future for their families. Nearly half said they expect life for “future generations to be worse than life today,” and 78 percent said they’re worried about the future direction of the economy.

We know that Americans are hungry for good middle-class jobs that will move us toward a shared prosperity. And when the labor movement was strong, so was the middle class. We know we need to rebuild both—because Americans want to work, but in return they want a decent wage that will allow them to support themselves and their families.

This week, the AFL-CIO and our union teamed up to convene a summit on how to solve a piece of this. The summit attracted everyone from Vice President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to business and union leaders, as well as educators and students from high-quality career and technical education programs…- See more at: http://www.aft.org/column/promise-career-and-technical-education#sthash.9fHchkaK.dpuf