A Chart To Explain the Last 30 Years
I’m not certain the authors intend this to mean that a shift to services means that workers will never get paid their MPL. But I think it does. But those at the AEA—er, ASSA—meeting can ask them tomorrow: Jan 06, 2013 8:00 am, Hyatt, Manchester E.
More tomorrow. Or some day thereafter.
Well Ken,
Seems not enough context to elicit a comment. I think well worth pursuing..readers might be used to other more colorful language on this isse.
Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but regarding all the talk about “skill set gap” in long-term unemployment. Health care was one of two areas said to have job growth. Does anyone know if they carve out the actual jobs? Do they lump, for instance, CNAs in nursing homes with RNs in hospitals?
A story on radio yesterday covered a college grad, accounting degree, unemployed for almost a year. She is told she “hasn’t the right skills”. She can’t even get a job mopping floors. I’m beginning to think the talk about “wrong skill sets” is a new way to blame the victim.
I’m beginning to think the talk about “wrong skill sets” is a new way to blame the victim.
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Why say “I’m beginning to think” (the talk about “wrong skill sets” is a new way to blame the victim.)
It’s 100% true. I am an historian that happens to be an expert on both French and Caribbean history. The Neo-Confederates in the Republcian Party do not want “feudalism” and they don’t want “fascism.”
In fact what they want is to revive plantation slavery. Say in Barbados. where one had the owner class (2%), a few skilled Whites (physicians, lawyers, bankers) serving the owner class, lots of Negroes working on the plantations. And then what were called “red legs.” The latter were very poor Whites, who were kept quiet by ginning up their anti-Negro racism.
Sound familiar? It’s what the Cantors, Ryans, and others preach all day.
The problem with that system is that free labor ALWAYS has been more productive than slave labor.
Which is why, contrary to widespread ignorance, slavery and serfdom disappeared during the Middle Ages. Landlords fired their slave drivers and gave out the land to the former slaves for fixed rents or sometimes a share of the crop.
So if we let the Neo-Confederates win, the US will fall behind countries with free labor, such as Germany and France. But the Neo-Cs won’t care because 100% of a smaller pie is more than the 10% of a larger pie they would get if the US had free labor.
And then there’s this-http://www.voxeu.org/article/it-s-not-skill-mismatch-disaggregate-evidence-us-unemployment-vacancy-relationship?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
“
One reason that the Beveridge curve relationship for the long-term unemployed shifted may be a shift in the desirability of the long-term unemployed to employers.
It is possible that the long-term unemployed are increasingly made up of workers whose skills are not suited to available jobs. However, if this were the case why wouldn’t we see some outward shift in the short-term relationship as well? Furthermore, the fact that the vacancy-unemployment relationship has shifted in all industries when only the workers who were previously employed in those industries are considered calls the mismatch hypothesis into question as well.”
Which may be another way of saying they are normally older, more senior employees who cost more to employ. Ya think? (Jan, I’m with you)
Neat comment Jan.
What matters as much — more — than the structure of today’s output: mfg v. service …
… is the structure of bargaining power in the labor market. If Carnegie’s steel workers had been organized under legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements (where scabs cannot exist because it is not legal to work without a contract), then, Carnegie would not have been able to use his new smelting process (which he bought from someone else — for a pittance?, like Gates buying DOS for $50,000) to reduce worker pay. His workers would have been irreplaceable no matter the process and could have written their own ticket to take financial advantage of the higher productivity (careful not to demand so much they put Carnegie out of business).
Terrible example morally for labor but on point about power and paycheck: In the late 60s the New York Transit union brought the city to a halt for better wages. Okay in itself but when my brother took a job as a car cleaner there he discovered they put 20 (TWENTY!) car cleaners inside a ten car train: he just had to wipe the walls clean of graffiti (not too hard, the solution could remove paint) and wipe the ceiling fan grills — somebody else came through sweeping (presumably all 10 cars all by himself).
I was there and saw it with my own eyes twice. Once, the crew was sitting around playing cards and drinking for an hour when the foreman came around asking who wanted to work overtime (1/4 of a car!).
So the ability to withhold your input is every bit as important (more?) than the supposed intrinsic value of your input (especially for government workers where there is no bottom line to worry over like the NYTA).
Sandi,
Having read the article you linked, I can’t help wonder if that curve and the shift could not also be the results of false vacancy rates to some degree. I would think the shift would be exactly what a developed economy like ours would see as the economy was being forced into a wage contraction.
These companies are fighting for increased visas from congress, they need to show need for such a fight. They are pitting states against each other for jobs also along with the “right to work” push.