Rising Employment No Inflation Rebound as Wages Affirm Bernanke

Amy Valle is caught in a labor-market recovery that’s forcing some Americans to settle for less. Before she lost her job as a full-time health-department case worker last November, she was making $23 an hour. Now she’s paid $10 an hour as a part-time assistant coordinator in an after-school program.

“From here on out, it will be a struggle,” said Valle, 32, whose husband lost his $50,000 government job and still is out of work after a year. “I don’t feel like there’s any place we can go to get what we were getting paid.”