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?
> 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.
-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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I didn't realize the NY Times was an operative of the Obama administration...
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!!"
If they are a primary cause, then the correct response is just to accept that good things may have tradeoffs.
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...
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.