The Wall Street Journal reported last week that, according to Labor Department data, roughly 284,000 American college graduates are working minimum wage jobs. While that is down from its 2010 peak, it is still double the number who worked such jobs before the Great Recession.

As the Journal notes, the share of college educated workers in minimum wage jobs hasn’t changed — it is still roughly 8 percent. What has increased, however, is the number of college graduates working for hourly pay:

Instead, they’re ending up slightly higher up the ladder, in jobs that pay an hourly wage. In 2002, college graduates made up 13% of all hourly workers. That figure has risen every year since, hitting 17.8% in 2012. There are now 13.4 million college graduates working for hourly pay, up 19% since the start of the recession. While the Labor Department doesn’t provide data on how much those jobs pay, it’s a safe bet most of them aren’t the kind of jobs students were hoping for when they graduated.

These increases, both in minimum and hourly wage jobs, are likely due to explosive growth in low-wage sectors since the end of the recession. Low-wage occupations accounted for a fifth of job losses during the recession, but they made up 58 percent of the jobs added since the recession’s end, according to a recent study from the National Employment Law Project. Meanwhile, mid-wage occupations, which would generally cater to recent college graduates, made up 60 percent of recession losses and just 22 percent of jobs added since it ended.

Low-wage sectors, in fact, have grown faster than the overall American economy since the end of the recession, according to NELP. The expectation is that growth in mid- and high-wage occupations will offset that boom as the economy strengthens, but studies have offered a different picture. The Economic Policy Institute, in fact, projects that one-in-four workers will be in low-wage jobs in 2020, roughly the same number that worked in those jobs immediately after the recession in 2010.

So while low-wage jobs came back faster than they left, mid- and high-wage jobs could continue to return at a far slower pace. That will leave college graduates less able to contribute to the economy (especially as they deal with huge student debt burdens). But since they still fare better than less educated workers, it also means many workers will be pushed down the wage ladder or out of the labor market altogether.

For all the talk among conservatives about the “bloated” size of government, public sector job losses have plagued America’s economic recovery from the Great Recession. And with the automatic budget cuts that took effect on March 1 beginning to take effect, those losses are only going to make efforts to fully escape the throes of the recession even harder.

Governments at the state, local, and federal level have cut 740,000 jobs since the beginning of the recession, according to Department of Labor data. So even as the private sector has added 5.2 million jobs in that time, the public sector is still in the red, as this chart from the Wall Street Journal illustrates:

The losses that occurred at the state and local level were due to crimped budgets because of the recession, but they were exacerbated by budget cuts at the federal level too. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other government workers have lost jobs as federal aid to states has been reduced and as states have cut aid to localities. The last three years were the worst on record for public sector job losses.

That will only get worse as sequestration continues to go into effect. Government agencies will begin furloughing workers at the beginning of April, and though that won’t have the same effect as all-out job losses, it will still reduce pay for those workers. Reduced aid to states and localities will mean that schools and government offices leave jobs vacant and cut existing staff. Government spending has traditionally pulled America out of economic downturns, and had it maintained its pre-recession employment level, the nation’s 7.8 percent unemployment rate would be a full point lower. Instead, budget cuts that lead to public sector job losses have only made the road to recovery longer than it should have been.

The American economy added 236,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent, its lowest level since the end of 2008. Job creation was bolstered by growth in housing and health care as well as aggressive monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, but the economy now faces the threat of sequestration, the automatic budget cuts that went into effect March 1.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that sequestration will cost the economy 750,000 jobs and knock more than half a point off of economic growth in 2013, threatening the economy that, while still plagued by high unemployment, is slowly chugging toward a recovery. And while Republicans argue that sequestration and other spending cuts are necessary to rein in America’s out-of-control spending, government spending has actually plateaued since President Obama took office:

Past recoveries have been bolstered by government spending and this one initially was too, thanks to the stimulus bill Obama signed into law in 2009. Premature deficit reduction efforts and the perpetual crises caused by Republican demands to cut spending at every turn have, however, hamstrung the recovery ever since:

Government employment has shrunk by more than half-a-million jobs since Obama took office, the worst period of job losses in that sector since World War II. Governments lost another 10,000 jobs in February and that number will almost surely rise in subsequent months as further spending cuts take effect. If the government employed as many people as it did in 2008, unemployment would be 7.2 percent; if government employment had grown as steadily as it has in the past, the unemployment rate would be at least a full point lower.

With borrowing costs at historic lows and growth still lagging, now would be a perfect time for the United States to avoid sequestration altogether and invest in infrastructure and other job creation efforts in order to grow the economy and avoid the fate that has befallen austerity-obsessed European countries, which are now experiencing second (and even third) recessions.

Instead, Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to make the investments the economy desperately needs and Washington has remained convinced that America’s problem is that the government is spending too much, even as economic reality shows that the only spending problem America has is that the government isn’t spending enough.

According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 236,000 jobs were created last month, bringing the unemployment rate down to 7.7 percent. Analysts had expected 160,000 jobs.

The private sector created 246,000 jobs, while the public sector again contracted, losing 10,000 jobs. The wider U-6 measure of underemployment fell a tick to 14.3 percent.

BLS revised the number of jobs created in December up from 196,000 to 219,000, and the change for January was revised down from 157,000 to 119,000.

40.2 percent of workers have been out of work for six months or more, continuing a persistent problem with long-term unemployment.

American workers are having a harder time finding full-time jobs, as the share of workers in part-time jobs grew to a multi-year high in February, according to a new survey from Gallup.

Just 43.3 percent of the workforce is now working in full-time jobs, the survey found, down from February 2012. The share of the workforce in part-time jobs grew to 20.6 percent last month, up from just 17.6 percent in July:

These part-time jobs rarely “provide an employee with enough money to live on” and “tend[] to have limited benefits,” making it hard for workers to support themselves and their families. But even many of the full-time jobs added since the end of the Great Recession aren’t enough for workers to make ends meet. A majority of jobs added since the recession have been in low-wage sectors, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and one-in-four American workers will be in low-wage jobs for the next decade.

At the same time, corporate profits are at record highs, even as workers’ wages are falling to record lows. Profits have risen nearly 20 times faster than incomes, and 88 percent of income growth during the recovery went to corporate profits, while just one percent went to workers’ wages.

President Obama today called, once again, for Republicans in Congress to support a plan to void the so-called “sequester,” the automatic budget cuts scheduled for March that were set in motion by the 2011 debt ceiling deal. House Republicans responded by releasing a statement that called for eliminating job training and financial literacy programs and by mocking the very idea of government funded scientific studies.

But engaging in the sort of austerity included in the sequester is a terrible idea with the economy in its current fragile state. As Macroeconomic Advisers noted today (reiterating its previous analysis), the sequester will knock 0.6 percent off of economic growth this year, killing 700,000 jobs:

– Our baseline forecast, which shows GDP growth of 2.6% in 2013 and 3.3% in 2014, does not include the sequestration.

– The sequestration would reduce our forecast of growth during 2013 by 0.6 percentage point (to 2.0%) but then, assuming investors expect the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to delay raising the federal funds rate, boost growth by 0.1 percentage point (to 3.4%) in 2014.

– By the end of 2014, the sequestration would cost roughly 700,000 jobs (including reductions in armed forces), pushing the civilian unemployment rate up ¼ percentage point, to 7.4%. The higher unemployment would linger for several years.

Here are the competing plans to void the sequester that have been proposed in Congress. The GOP has yet to introduce an official plan this time around, instead just pointing to legislation that it passed in the last Congress. Of all the plans, only the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ acknowledges that the country’s most pressing issue right now is not the deficit, but lingering, high unemployment.

American workers who lost jobs during the Great Recession are slowly returning to the workforce, but in doing so, they are often coming back to jobs that pay them less than the ones they lost, according to a study released last week. More than half of the people who became unemployed during the recession found a new job within six weeks, but a majority of them found jobs that paid less than the one they lost, the study from Rutgers University found:

Those who were laid off during the recession and fortunate enough to find new employment are generally settling for less in their new positions. As shown in Figure 2, nearly half (48%) say their current job is a step down from the one they held before the recession hit. A majority (54%) report lower pay in their new job compared to the job they held before being laid off.

One reason workers are returning to jobs that pay less than the ones they lost is likely because of the influx of low-wage jobs since the recession. A National Employment Law Project survey found that 58 percent of the jobs created since the end of the recession have been in low-wage sectors, even though such jobs made up just 21 percent of recession losses. Mid-wage sectors accounted for 60 percent of jobs lost during the recession, but have so far made up only 22 percent of those created during the recovery.

Several commentators have posited that President Obama should focus on the federal deficit during tonight’s State of the Union address, explaining to America how he will rein in a supposedly out of control budget. Obama should “spend the bulk of his time talking about the deficit,” wrote the Post’s Chris Cillizza. “When President Obama delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday evening, here’s one thing you won’t hear: an ambitious new plan to rein in the national debt,” bemoaned the Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery.

But this is completely backwards. With unemployment stubbornly hovering around 8 percent, Obama’s focus should be on jobs and economic growth, not the deficit. Here are seven reasons why:

1. Deficits are shrinking. According to the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office, over the last few years, $4.5 trillion in deficits have been reduced. In August 2010, CBO’s “alternative fiscal scenario” projected a deficit in 2020 of 7.8 percent of GDP. Now it projects that deficit will be 4.7 percent of GDP.

2. The debt is all but stabilized. CBO noted that the debt is basically stabilized, peaking at 77.7 percent of GDP in 2014, then dropping to 73.1 percent in 2018 before rising slightly again in 2022. According to the Economic Policy Institute, an additional $670 billion in deficit reduction is enough to fully stabilize the debt, which is less than half of the additional deficit reduction Obama has called for.

3. Spending growth is slow. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said over the weekend that spending is not a problem, and the stabilizing debt and falling deficit show that she’s right. Under Obama, spending is growing at its slowest rate since the Eisenhower administration. Tax revenue, meanwhile, hit lows not seen since World War II over the last few years.

4. The output gap is huge and job growth is slow. As economist Adam Hersh noted, $900 billion more in economic activity is required to fill the “output gap,” the difference between what the economy is producing now and what it needs to produce to create full employment. CBO projects that the unemployment rate will not fall below 6 percent until 2018. The U.S. still needs 3 million jobs just to make up for those lost during the Great Recession.

5. Austerity is killing the recovery. CBO anticipates that economic growth will be slow this year due to “fiscal tightening that has already begun or is scheduled to occur.” European countries that have cut spending in an attempt to reduce their debts have, instead, quashed economic growth while their deficits barely moved (or expanded). Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen yesterday blasted Congress for allowing fiscal policy to be a “headwind for the recovery.”

6. Infrastructure investment is collapsing. Public investment has plunged since the Great Recession. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, America’s infrastructure deficit stands at $1.6 trillion and will grow to $2.75 trillion over the next decade, which will cost the country $3 trillion in wasted economic potential and 3.5 million jobs.

7. Borrowing rates are incredibly low. The cost of borrowing for the U.S. has been low for years, plunging to record lows over the summer. This provides a golden opportunity for government to borrow money and create jobs while making valuable public investments.

A favorite GOP talking point is that a slew of regulation and taxes are preventing employers from creating jobs, which explains the stubbornly high unemployment rate. “By pursuing a steady repeal of job-destroying regulations, we can help lift the cloud of uncertainty hanging over small and large employers alike, empowering them to hire more workers,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). “Business owners are reluctant to create jobs today if they’re going to need to pay more tomorrow to comply with onerous new regulations,” claimed Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

But a new study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve finds that this line of thinking is largely bunk:

Figure 3 shows there was almost no correlation between job growth in a state from 2008 to 2011 and the increase in the percentage of businesses citing regulation and taxes as their primary concern. In fact, if anything, the correlation is positive.

States in which businesses increasingly cited regulation and taxes experienced higher job growth, although this correlation is not statistically significant. The lack of correlation is not a matter of the timing we choose. For example, there also is no strong correlation if we examine the 2009–11 period or the 2010–11 period instead.

As this chart shows, there is basically no relationship between businesses citing increased regulations and taxes and higher unemployment rates:

In fact, some studies show that far from killing jobs, regulations help create them and help boost economic growth.

Instead, the San Francisco Fed shows that lack of job creation is tied to a lack of demand — customers don’t have any money to spend, so businesses have no reason to expand. “U.S. counties with high household debt levels coming into the recession are the same counties with depressed levels of employment in the nontradable sector today,” the study said.