According to a report put out by the Census Bureau today, the nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7% of the population last year, despite 2.2 million jobs being created during the same period. This is the latest in the trend of poverty level Wal-Mart jobs being created, instead of middle class jobs.

Wal-Mart is single-handedly driving down our standard of living by rapidly expanding the number of low-wage, no-benefits jobs, while taking away stable jobs. Because of Wal-Mart's market power, other retailers are forced to lower their employee's compensation to compete with Wal-Mart's poverty level wages.

From 2001 to 2004, poverty-level jobs (jobs paying less than $9 an hour) out grew living wage jobs ($12 to $15 an hour) by 2-to-1. (UC-Berkeley Institute of Industrial Relations, The Evolving Distribution of Wages and Job Composition over the 2001 to 2004 Period)

The Wal-Martization of America not only threatens the middle class and drives down wages, but is potentially creating a permanent underclass. In fact, in the retail sector, real wages have actually declined over the last 20 years. The average retail employee earns 5% less in real annual earnings from 1982 to 2002. What does this mean? In 2002, the average retail employee earned $15,140. Twenty years ago, that same employee would have earned $15,883 in 2002 dollars. (Analysis of BLS Covered Employees Survey Data).