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I've been wondering how many of these jobs are just gone for good due to higher efficiency and permanently increased productivity? We assume most of the unemplo

by jsz0 16y ago

I've been wondering how many of these jobs are just gone for good due to higher efficiency and permanently increased productivity? We assume most of the unemployment & underemployment is caused directly by the recession but I'm not so sure about that. It seems possible to me we had sort of a jobs bubble where companies were overstaffing and the recession just exposed this. If you lay off 20% of your staff and magically the other 80% pickup the slack what incentive is there to re-expand by 20%? My theory is modern technology and communications have just made certain positions inherently more productive. I can think of a time not that long ago where I may have lost an hour a day driving back to my office just to check my e-mail. Now I do that throughout the day on my SmartPhone while working on other projects. For a less skilled job I look at how grocery stores now scan products by UPC. There goes the job of the 19 year old tagging every can of corn with a little price tag sticker. When you run out of corn your computer inventory (tracked by UPC) knows about it. You spend 30 seconds re-ordering more through a computer instead of 15 unproductive minutes on the telephone waiting for the supplier to take your order. If these scenarios are being repeated in different ways all over the economy I think we need to consider that the rise in worker productivity is permanent and these jobs are gone for good.

dantheman 16y ago
Their is always more work than that which can be accomplished. Unfortunately right now, we don't know what that work is and what its value will be. This makes it extremely risky for people to jump careers since they don't know where to go, and it makes it hard to invest capital/start a business because the future payments are unknown. If the housing market was at the correct value - not insanely overpriced as it is now people could be employed building bigger/new houses. If certain resources are limited (high price) then investments can be made to harvest them more cheaply. It takes time for people to experiment and for knowledge/price information to make its way around the market. Unfortunately, we also have some government policies that are actively distorting market signals and also increasing uncertainty of the future. So while jobs disappear for good, new ones will be created -- unfortunately it is not quick or painless. I believe Ned Ludd's town took ~50 years to achieve the same level of success after the introduction of the automatic loom.
jdminhbg 16y ago
See here for an economist's take on that: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zero-marginal-product-workers.html http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07... He notes that there's been "[a] recovery in output, but not in employment. That means a smaller number of laborers are working, but we are producing as much as before. As a simple first cut, how should we measure the marginal product of those now laid-off workers? I would start with the number zero. " Also here (linked in the above article): http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/07/the_zmp_hypothe.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/07/the_zmp_hypothe.... Kling's pet theory is "recalculation," in that recessions are frequently the result of lots of people being employed doing the wrong thing (in this instance, building and selling houses), and it takes a while for those workers to be "reassigned" by the market to productive jobs. Money quote here: " Let us talk about the marginal product of worker i in occupation j. In most cases, this is indeed zero. My marginal product would be zero in fishing, medicine, and many other fields. In a complex economy, if you were to randomly assign workers to jobs, ZMP would be the norm, not the exception. The more complex the economy, the more carefully workers must be assigned in order to avoid ZMP."
tkahn6 16y ago
This. I find it absolutely amazing this hasn't been talked about more. I have no idea what the majority of the population is going to do in the near-future. These jobs are not coming back. I posit that a large percentage of the currently unemployed will never be employed in their sector again. We will never reach pre-2007 employment levels because the majority of jobs weren't and aren't necessary.
- adammichaelc 16y ago
  I up-voted you, but what's up with the reddit-speak? It's unnecessary.
  - tkahn6 16y ago
    How would you have liked me to phrase it?
    - adammichaelc 16y ago
      Just without the "This"
      - tkahn6 16y ago
        That's a relatively common thing to see on HN.
    - adammichaelc 16y ago
      Just without the "This"
  - jrockway 16y ago
    What part is the reddit-speak? "This."? I saw that on MetaFilter long before I saw it on Reddit.
- rdtsc 16y ago
  Invest in some online colleges? Those who lost their jobs due to efficiency and technology improvements are going to become the target customers of many of those online schools in hopes to switch to a new sector. They will take on a large amount debt as a result and might never actually be able to find jobs -- but the colleges need now worry about that -- they'll get payed by the government...
Groxx 16y ago
I was just wondering how much something like this has affected the programming world. Business shrinks, loses some of its less productive programmers, and possibly gives their better ones more control, or hires more carefully and gets a better one. I think just about everyone here is aware of the massive productivity difference between a low-tier code-monkey and a guru - gurus are cheap for what they do, they're just hard to find.
- _delirium 16y ago
  That might happen at some places, but often the opposite happens: companies go into maintenance mode where they hire the cheapest possible "just keep the thing from falling over" programmers and sysadmins, and get rid of the expensive programmers, who are often seen as an "R&D" luxury that can be dumped in a recession.
davidw 16y ago
The economy is not a zero sum game. After all, the population of the United States was 92 million people in 1910, with vastly inferior technology and productivity. And yet, there are still jobs to go around, and things will improve.
guelo 16y ago
B.S. there's lots of things that we as a country need to get done. From our crumbling infrastructure to global warming to preparing for the retirement boom we need to be investing massively, not scaling back. We have too few resources to get everything done that needs to get done, not too little. It is a failure of our markets and our government that so many resources sit idly by.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  ...preparing for the retirement boom... Actually, there are very few investments we can make which will prevent retirements from destroying/severely harming the US. Social security is directly indexed to wages, and medical spending tends to be proportional to the higher wage brackets as well (most medical spending is labor costs). Virtually any productive investments we make would increase wages, and social security/medicare costs will rise commensurately. The only thing we can do to prepare for the retirement boom is either cut benefits, or massively increase productivity with no commensurate increase in wages.

by jsz0 16y ago

dantheman 16y ago

Their is always more work than that which can be accomplished. Unfortunately right now, we don't know what that work is and what its value will be. This makes it extremely risky for people to jump careers since they don't know where to go, and it makes it hard to invest capital/start a business because the future payments are unknown. If the housing market was at the correct value - not insanely overpriced as it is now people could be employed building bigger/new houses. If certain resources are limited (high price) then investments can be made to harvest them more cheaply. It takes time for people to experiment and for knowledge/price information to make its way around the market. Unfortunately, we also have some government policies that are actively distorting market signals and also increasing uncertainty of the future. So while jobs disappear for good, new ones will be created -- unfortunately it is not quick or painless. I believe Ned Ludd's town took ~50 years to achieve the same level of success after the introduction of the automatic loom.

jdminhbg 16y ago

See here for an economist's take on that: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zero-marginal-product-workers.html http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07... He notes that there's been "[a] recovery in output, but not in employment. That means a smaller number of laborers are working, but we are producing as much as before. As a simple first cut, how should we measure the marginal product of those now laid-off workers? I would start with the number zero. " Also here (linked in the above article): http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/07/the_zmp_hypothe.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/07/the_zmp_hypothe.... Kling's pet theory is "recalculation," in that recessions are frequently the result of lots of people being employed doing the wrong thing (in this instance, building and selling houses), and it takes a while for those workers to be "reassigned" by the market to productive jobs. Money quote here: " Let us talk about the marginal product of worker i in occupation j. In most cases, this is indeed zero. My marginal product would be zero in fishing, medicine, and many other fields. In a complex economy, if you were to randomly assign workers to jobs, ZMP would be the norm, not the exception. The more complex the economy, the more carefully workers must be assigned in order to avoid ZMP."

tkahn6 16y ago

This. I find it absolutely amazing this hasn't been talked about more. I have no idea what the majority of the population is going to do in the near-future. These jobs are not coming back. I posit that a large percentage of the currently unemployed will never be employed in their sector again. We will never reach pre-2007 employment levels because the majority of jobs weren't and aren't necessary.

adammichaelc 16y ago
I up-voted you, but what's up with the reddit-speak? It's unnecessary.
- tkahn6 16y ago
  How would you have liked me to phrase it?
  - adammichaelc 16y ago
    Just without the "This"
    - tkahn6 16y ago
      That's a relatively common thing to see on HN.
  - adammichaelc 16y ago
    Just without the "This"
- jrockway 16y ago
  What part is the reddit-speak? "This."? I saw that on MetaFilter long before I saw it on Reddit.
rdtsc 16y ago
Invest in some online colleges? Those who lost their jobs due to efficiency and technology improvements are going to become the target customers of many of those online schools in hopes to switch to a new sector. They will take on a large amount debt as a result and might never actually be able to find jobs -- but the colleges need now worry about that -- they'll get payed by the government...

Groxx 16y ago

I was just wondering how much something like this has affected the programming world. Business shrinks, loses some of its less productive programmers, and possibly gives their better ones more control, or hires more carefully and gets a better one. I think just about everyone here is aware of the massive productivity difference between a low-tier code-monkey and a guru - gurus are cheap for what they do, they're just hard to find.

_delirium 16y ago
That might happen at some places, but often the opposite happens: companies go into maintenance mode where they hire the cheapest possible "just keep the thing from falling over" programmers and sysadmins, and get rid of the expensive programmers, who are often seen as an "R&D" luxury that can be dumped in a recession.

davidw 16y ago

The economy is not a zero sum game. After all, the population of the United States was 92 million people in 1910, with vastly inferior technology and productivity. And yet, there are still jobs to go around, and things will improve.

guelo 16y ago

B.S. there's lots of things that we as a country need to get done. From our crumbling infrastructure to global warming to preparing for the retirement boom we need to be investing massively, not scaling back. We have too few resources to get everything done that needs to get done, not too little. It is a failure of our markets and our government that so many resources sit idly by.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
...preparing for the retirement boom... Actually, there are very few investments we can make which will prevent retirements from destroying/severely harming the US. Social security is directly indexed to wages, and medical spending tends to be proportional to the higher wage brackets as well (most medical spending is labor costs). Virtually any productive investments we make would increase wages, and social security/medicare costs will rise commensurately. The only thing we can do to prepare for the retirement boom is either cut benefits, or massively increase productivity with no commensurate increase in wages.