Why American Workers Without Much Education Are Being Hammered
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Yes. The both the number and percentage of immigrants have doubled since 1990. I'm pro immigration, but it's odd that we aren't even talking about how immigration affects job prospects, especially given the dismal wages across the board.
The premise of the main article, though, is that the major impact of globalization has been the decline in higher-wage sectors such as manufacturing, wheres immigrants are competing more in lower-wage sectors.
The analysis basically books down to "supply exceeds demand, uneducated hardest hit". I would have liked to see more analysis on the ultimate reason for the lack of demand for workers.
Finally, it bugs me when people blame technology for destroying jobs and not society, employees, and employers for thinking simple, repetitive jobs are viable long-term career paths. Distilled to absurdity, we could pay people to dig holes and refill them, but robots will always be orders of magnitude better at that. Why blame the robot and not everyone else for not realizing hole-digger is a job with an expiration date?
It's always funny how when these kinds of questions arise in HN a lot of people is worried about what are "we" going to do with "them" when "we" have not works for "them".
(not talking about the parent here, by the way)
It doesn't make sense, then, to stand around and grumble about how the robots are messing everything up. Instead, we need to develop productive advice and attitudes about being creators that use all this automation to do even greater things.
-phase lag: It takes a while for the economy to find uses for increased labour.
-Until the above is fixed: Unbalanced levels of education: The economy requires x amount of elementary graduates per y amount of high school graduates per z amount of university graduates. Mostly unskilled immigrants don't come in these ratios and therefore introduces imbalance, meaning there's a surplus of unskilled workers
> People take these jobs because they have no other choice.
You take a job because you have no other choice. You stay at a job past the expiration date because:
* nobody told you that jobs have expiration dates
* you know but think you'll deal with that problem later
...I think it's important for us to create a culture that encourages people to think about their jobs and careers strategically. The broader conversation revolves around statements like "people are stuck" or "they need retraining and/or education". I don't think those statements and attitudes are helping people enough, especially when bootstrapping, self-education, and content creation are cheaper and easier than ever.
Also, please debate why most humans have to work in the first place just to put food on the table while the 1% of Earth's population controlling ~40% of global wealth.
Should they be? Isn't a lot of rGDP growth caused by a growing population. Or is it not keeping up with rGDP/per capita.
Doesn't this go away when you take into account benefits on top of salary?
It is bad enough to be told that your 10% salary raise will be payable in lottery tickets (most people remain healthy and get zero raise, a minority of sick people get huge payoff in the form of medical services); but when you find out that the jackpot is the same size but more tickets got printed (medical cost raise but quality of service flats out) you get really pissed off.
The simple answer is: because state economic policy has been systematically configured to keep inflation low and asset values high. Any economist can tell you that low inflation and high asset values, as goals, conflict with full employment, and tend to suppress the price of labor. Somehow, it has become a Thing You Don't Say to actually admit this fact, because that would mean low wages are a social problem rather than an individual moral failure.
In terms of immigration policy, one might want to ask oneself why tech companies want to increase H1s; why people like Zuckerberg care about the immigration issue at all. It isn't because of some altruism. More immigrants mean declining labor costs. This article exposes the canary of the lower wage segments, however a similar pattern will eventually emerge in the higher wage fields as well.
I didn't realize the NY Times was an operative of the Obama administration...
It depress wages of those employers who only hire legal workers. Why bother raising above minimum wage if you don't have to
It means more people will come illegally, depressing wages being paid by those who hire those who are not authorized. to work here.
I agree some business are the problem. They need to be punished.
As the Census Bureau pointed out in 2003:
The percentage of the foreign born with a high school diploma (67 percent) was dramatically lower than that of the native population (88 percent), but paradoxically, the percentage with a bachelor's degree was the same (27 percent).[2]
I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that first generation immigrants may have less remunerative employment opportunities than native born citizens, regardless of their education level, but particularly without a high school diploma.
[1] http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immi...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...
If they are a primary cause, then the correct response is just to accept that good things may have tradeoffs.
As an aside, Japan but not Britain does a "good" job at limiting immigration despite the great need for it within their economy. Their bet is that the pain to their economy is worth the stability of their society. I suppose we shall see who has the better answer an open economy like the UK or a closed labor economy like Japan.
Also, this not a phenomenon unique to rich western countries, south Africa, Nigeria, Kenya are also very keen on protecting their own labor markets from immigrant classes. There is a protectionist aspect but its not racial in nature. Look at the Mexican motto "Mexico for Mexicans" and how other Hispanics are unfavored in their economy. Imagine a European country having a similar motto...
Every time there's a conversation about "is undocumented immigration good?" the response from the press is "without immigrants we wouldn't have Google!!"
Then we are going to have this weird culture where the people serving you food have college degrees and are desperately trying to pay off student loans. Meanwhile everyone else will think they can just make a startup or small business to survive but there will be so many copycats the customer base will be too fractured.
We better discover nearly free power soon or things are going to get ugly for the 98% in the next decade.
When I was young, a unskilled laborer's child had access to the same or similar quality schools as I did (although I had much bigger advantages in culture by having educated parents). Today, the working poor in the US are often "richer" in shallow ways - they can buy a smartphone and a big TV - but they are less able than ever to afford a good education for their kids, usually because they simply cannot afford a home in a good school district.
I think the next decade is going to be tough for most people including the highly educated.
I would like to stem the flow of jobs drifting overseas, but don't feel confident. Programmers, even the ones with degrees are going to be hit hard. There's not to many white collar professions a hungry, intelligent person in another country could not master over the Internet--more easily than programming, and website developement?
I hope this TPP is not as bad as it seems? I sometimes think Obama knew the party was over? I saw the desperation in his face when he felt he couldn't convince Americans they need health insurance. He knew the president really couldn't change the economy, but he knew we needed health coverage. (Coverage that would protect the family home from hospital litigators--if an uninsured family member got sick).
I wish us well, but am scared. I do wish Bush let the banks fail. That cd with .1 percent is frighting. These low rates helped the economy, but really hurt guys like me. Guys who couldn't gamble in stocks.
I am giving Obama the benefit of the doubt on this trade agreement. If it's as bad as some say; Trump might have a shot at president if he is serious about his reversing the trade imbalance, and bring America back to a manufacturing Country?
On the minimum wage; I feel Obama sees the writing on the wall--the future will be bleak. The rich will have disposable income. The rich will still need to eat, buy, and hire security guards, etc. There will be great inflation. Why not get ahead of the game and raise the minimum wage? It might help out the majority(including the educated, whom don't come from benevolent wealthy families) get a little bit ahead?
I wish I moved to France in the late 80's. I had a shot, but was afraid.
Trump is no friend of the working man/woman and has 0% of being president.
At first I was concerned because one of my jobs was to insure that payroll checks were printed on time and delivered to sites by payday or when required by law; terminations and those who quit in some states are required to be paid within a set amount of time. Having talked to only a few I found many simply liked the job because a) it was easy, b) schedules were nearly fixed, and c) the uniform imparted a sense of import. I never really ran into anyone I wouldn't want to have watching over a site. Those types tend to self weed themselves out.
Even in a day and age of automation there is still the comfort level many get from having a person about. Not all guards are low paid but many are.
Immigration reform will hit many sectors hard; likely the security sector as well. So the question becomes, how do you lessen the burden of all the fees for government services these people have to pay? We might not be able to legislate their pay to a level everyone is happy about but there are many costs of living imposed by government that could be restructured based on income.
However while uneducated "workers" may be suffering, among the educated there are more and more "non-workers":
Americans think that they deserve a certain standard of living. Why? Why do you deserve it? I don't see a good answer to this.
For a country emphasizing competition and capitalism so much, I find it hilarious when Americans start complaining about being out-competed (by other countries or by college grads or by smarter people).
The reality is that, in society, not everyone can get everything. The real issue is with glamorizing excessive profits.
Also, we can't expect only the good parts of globalization. If we want $10 t-shirts made by a worker in Bangladesh, we had better be prepared to lose the job to them. They are doing it cheaper and better than entitled us.
There's a solution! Tax the rich (and corporations) more and redistribute wealth in a fair way that creates more local opportunities, but we know where this discussion goes.
Because they built a society that can provide it. To everyone.
A good life for people is the goal. The terminal goal. You don't have to justify doing good for people; you have to justify making their lives worse.
That society was built on exploiting global resources and issues eg: selling weapons for wars, extracting oil, gold and diamonds from countries with uneducated leaders, manufacturing stuff from countries where living wage is lower aka making lives worse.
Just think about it! When those other countries start becoming more and more educated and start turning things for their own good, this great American society is going to have to suffer.
Let's say there are two people (American and Chinese) in this world and one t-shirt manufactured. The American was always able to afford it. Now the Chinese can afford it and can outbid the American. Doesn't the standard of living of the American drop? Yes.
So while America had a lot of a and b, the rest of the world is having that now too. So America has lesser of a and b as a proportion of total a an b
$15/hr is probably too high for a part of the country with a very low cost of living like Mississippi.
The federal minimum wage sets the absolute bare minimum.
The often mentioned radical alternative is Basic Income, which would eliminate all minimum wages and push up wages on the low end by tightening the labor market (because many on the low-income end of the labor spectrum would opt not to work).
I've seen a lot of people just "settle" with a crappy job which pays poorly just because they aren't motivated to go find something better or more challenging on a day-to-day basis. Some of these people have gone through college, some haven't.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/03/an-epidemic-of-laziness...
Lazy takers!
I'm not talking in absolutes. I'm just suggesting that the correlation that the article assumes is correct may not be the only reason based off of my personal observations, that's all.
That said, the question of "motivation" now has a deeper subtext thanks to recent research on early childhood development and the impact of family and community on each individual's development and achievement.
Rather than an inherent personal quality (which is easily corrupted into a proxy for "worth" or "deserving"), we are learning that motivation is heavily influenced by factors outside a child's control, like how much loving attention they receive, how many words they hear per hour, the level of violence they witness or experience, the number of books in their home, the professional success of their parent or parents, the average socio-economic level of success in their school district, etc.
So, to say that maybe the answer is motivation, is not as much of an answer as it used to be. Now we want to know where motivation comes from, and what we can do to improve that.
Definitely. It's sad that these outside factors influence something so important, but that doesn't change the fact that some people are motivated and some are not, does it?
These can include, but are not limited to: violence and trauma in one's community and family, lack of reliable parents or positive role models in one's community, childhood economic pressure towards physical survival and meeting basic day-to-day needs.
These are all things that individuals born into poverty in the US face at disproportionate levels, and they can have a negative effect on motivation. We generally don't fault people for the very harsh circumstances they are born into.
But the fact remains, which sucks, but still.
Where do we draw the line? I was attacked by a dog when I was a child which was very violent and traumatic for me. I also grew up "are we going to eat tonight" poor. Do I qualify?
We learned that people need vitamin C to prevent scurvy; now we have government policies and cultural norms that make sure that every child gets enough vitamin C.
As our scientific understanding of brain development grows, we'll (hopefully) develop norms and policies to make sure kids get what they need there too. You can see today the early stages of that process with respect to exercise, and more recently, sleep.
And unfortunately for them, it doesn't keep them from inflicting the same life-outlook on their offspring. Greatest tragedy of our society, that we overlook that.
I'll leave it to the smart statists out there to figure out how to remedy this tragedy whilst staying within the "moral framework" they have in-place already. You know, the thing that makes it "illegal" to carry bad-plants in your pocket while simultaneously making it legal to bring innocent life into this world without being able to take care of it, and ultimately making it suffer.
Yes, there are rare people who have never finished high school and had material success, probably most drug dealers who cashed out and bought franchises or real estate. So logically then general causation is ruled out.
But for most people without high school degrees it's extremely difficult to disassociate their lack of education with later material success.
In the year 2015, graduation from high school is a much easier in almost all ways. If you can't manage to graduate there is something seriously wrong and I probably don't want to hire you.
This is why I'm always terrified of trying to push more and more people through educational hoops: the ones who don't make it are that much more weird and excluded.
The matter of the fact is that in most blue-collar jobs, salaries stagnate after years of experience.
Having an education only do 2 things:
- Gives one the ability for a white-collar job
- With the same stagnation, blue-collar salaries become 'higher' and most workers are complacent about it
> - With the same stagnation, blue-collar salaries become 'higher' and most workers are complacent about it
Generally, blue-collars rely largely on 'manual labor' and, therefore, after its peak productivity, they hit a depreciative tendency(younger employees/outsourcing/...) .
White collars rely largely on networking and influence, hence its 'productivity' continues to grow.
The more 'manual work' one performs, the smaller his salary growth is.