Job Creation Stats

As a busy mom, I don't have a lot of time to go look at the latest economic numbers. However, I did hear John Kerry quoted on the radio as saying (I paraphrase here) "Sure there are new jobs, but they're not good paying jobs!" I thought I'd comment on that idea, that you can create jobs without creating better paying jobs.

First of all, how does Kerry know how much these new jobs pay? I'm not asking a partisan rhetorical question, I just want to understand what makes him say that.

But putting all that aside, let's consider what's happening at my husband's workplace. In the last couple of months, they have hired at least 10 new people, all entry-level. OK, those are lower-paying jobs. But what's happening is that now that they have 10 new people to do the entry-level work, my husband's job has basically turned into a promotion. He got a raise and now has a bunch of other people relieving him of a lot of grunt work. Also, because they now have enough techs to do installations, they could afford the manpower to split the largest district into two districts, so there are now new district managers who were promoted from the previous entry-level employees. The company didn't hire new people to fill those jobs; they promoted from within. The people they promoted would probably have sought better-paying jobs had they not been promoted. So in essence the creation of 10 new entry-level jobs meant that additional management jobs came available, higher-paying jobs that as far as I know aren't counted in the job creation stats.

I'd be interested to know what others think about this. I'm not too familiar with job creation stats.