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> The US middle class has contracted because more people have moved up and out of the middle class and into the upper classes, than have moved down and out (tha

by skosch 9y ago

> The US middle class has contracted because more people have moved up and out of the middle class and into the upper classes, than have moved down and out (that's true over 10, 20, 30 years of time) I think this is a super interesting phenomenon, and I honestly don't understand how the migration from middle to upper class works in practice, particularly in the face of technological un(der)employment. (And nobody has been able to explain it to me.) However, the exact same is happening in the EU as well (graph: http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/techun_polarization.png http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/techun_polarization.pn...) so it's not like it's some libertarian US-only miracle (or that labour-friendly rules would prevent it from happening for that matter).

dragonwriter 9y ago
> However, the exact same is happening in the EU as well (graph: http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/techun_polarization.pn... http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/techun_polarization.pn...) I've responded to the GP about how the US study cited is misleading, but the graph here seems to be worse, as it seems to simply misrepresent the data in the cited source, "Goos, Manning, Salomons (2014; Table 2)". Looking in the paper that it appears to be referencing [0], Table 2 shows -- instead of the across the board decreases in share of jobs in the low wage sector with increases in the middle and high wage sectors shown on the graph -- increases in most countries in both the low (Finland and Luxembourg being exceptions) and high (all countries) sectors, and decreases in the middle wage sector (again, all countries.) The first sentence of the conclusion of the paper states: "The employment structure in Western Europe has been polarizing with rising employment shares for high-paid professionals and managers as well as low-paid personal service workers and falling employment shares of manufacturing and routine office workers." [0] http://personal.lse.ac.uk/manning/work/ExplainingJobPolarization.pdf http://personal.lse.ac.uk/manning/work/ExplainingJobPolariza...

by skosch 9y ago

dragonwriter 9y ago

> However, the exact same is happening in the EU as well (graph: http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/techun_polarization.pn... http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/techun_polarization.pn...) I've responded to the GP about how the US study cited is misleading, but the graph here seems to be worse, as it seems to simply misrepresent the data in the cited source, "Goos, Manning, Salomons (2014; Table 2)". Looking in the paper that it appears to be referencing [0], Table 2 shows -- instead of the across the board decreases in share of jobs in the low wage sector with increases in the middle and high wage sectors shown on the graph -- increases in most countries in both the low (Finland and Luxembourg being exceptions) and high (all countries) sectors, and decreases in the middle wage sector (again, all countries.) The first sentence of the conclusion of the paper states: "The employment structure in Western Europe has been polarizing with rising employment shares for high-paid professionals and managers as well as low-paid personal service workers and falling employment shares of manufacturing and routine office workers." [0] http://personal.lse.ac.uk/manning/work/ExplainingJobPolarization.pdf http://personal.lse.ac.uk/manning/work/ExplainingJobPolariza...