Although nearly 14 million jobs have been added to the economy since 1979, there is strong evidence that job expansion has been purchased at the price of lower wages. A number of studies have confirmed this downside to job creation, the most prominent being a 1986 study by Bluestone and Harrison for the Joint Economic Committee. A recent study conducted by American Enterprise Institute economists Kosters and Ross for the United States Department of Labor, however, arrived at conclusions that are radically different: they found neither a disproportionate nor a growing share of new jobs in the low-earnings category, but a rise in the share of jobs with high earnings. A reexamination of the Kosters and Ross study concludes that their claims about job quality trends are not supported by their research or by extending their analysis through another year of recovery. Instead, their own data support the general conclusion of the Bluestone and Harrison thesis. Some of the reasons for the disparity include the following: (1) Kosters and Ross focus on the annual wages of all workers, full and part time, and consequently they cannot distinguish between wage growth from people working at higher-paying jobs and that of people working longer hours at lower-paying jobs; (2) their research shows an expansion of low-wage jobs for men--all of the upscaling they find is due to improvements in the annual wages of women; and (3) their estimates shows that midlevel wage jobs shrank, whereas low-wage jobs expanded. (This report contains Mishel's critique of the 1987 report by Kosters and Ross and a critique of the new Kosters and Ross report that was released at the July 1988 Economic Policy Institute seminar.) (KC)