4 ms·

I ask this question every so often on economic threads - Are jobs created or discovered? What field of study is most associated with "new jobs"?

by csours 4y ago

tuatoru 4y ago
What is the difference between "created" and "discovered" when it comes to jobs? Was "social media manager" created or discovered? How about (to take an older example) telex operator?
peteradio 4y ago
spark+kindling+gust
vorpalhex 4y ago
Jobs are more often created than discovered. Tomorrow we might discover a new kind of math, requiring newly trained mathmeticians in a novel field. Those mathmeticians will need admins, business services, places to work, food, etc. Thus even the discovery of a few jobs has more jobs created than found.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  The mathematicians don't need any more food than they did before the new kind of math was discovered. Why would you count that as job creation?
  - carlmr 4y ago
    The single mathematician no, but a new field would lead to the creation of a new building with new people at some point.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      Every one of the people in that building needs the same amount of food they did before they moved in.
      - jhundal 4y ago
        Same amount of food yes. But if a mathematician was just sitting on the sidelines before this new field, they may decide it is more productive to trade time they spent on preparing food for more time to spend on math.
        lupire 4y ago
        That's just moving the food job somewhere else. It's not clear that this thread is about. Jobs a weak approximation of utility creation + equalit of the distribution of that utility.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Having food is not the hard part, the logistics of food is the hard part. Feeding one person is easy. Feeding 200 people with a mix of allergies is hard.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      On the other hand, when you're already feeding 4000 people, feeding 4200 people is not noticeably harder.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
I don't think that's particularly relevant here. We're going to see jobs open up in the US (and Canada) because even with higher labor costs, the strong dollar and available energy will make it easy to purchase goods and build things here. They won't be novel jobs so much as leveraging an absolute economic advantage against every pretty much every other nation on earth to steal jobs from other countries. But I guess to answer the question, jobs, especially at the bottom are "enabled" more than anything. We want people to do simple tasks, but tech advancements make it efficient enough to actually pay people to do it. Like rideshare drivers, ignoring valid claims about vc money burning. Some new types of jobs might be created or discovered but most jobs changes are about determining whether its viable to pay something to do something you want to do. The idea to have them do it has always been there.
t_mann 4y ago
The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics. I don't understand your other question, so it's hard to answer. What do you mean by "discovered"? Discovered by whom, the employer or the the employee? But you may be interested in knowing that models of labor markets are often based on matching models - you've got two groups (employers, employees) and everyobdy is trying to find {one,many} members of the other group that are a good match.
- csours 4y ago
  > The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Job discovery is a phrase used by Clayton Christensen to describe finding a job to be done. He uses it to describe finding a product to sell to people to perform some function in their lives - a job to be done by a product that you make. I'm using it as an alternative to the idea of "job creation" because I don't think that's real. There is a certain political narrative about job creation and job creators. I tried to find support for it in academia and I could not. I didn't want to put all this in my original question because then I would only get political replies. --- About politics - Yes my question has some political motivation, but I am genuinely interested in the subject. My motivation is not to prove or disprove, but to learn. You don't have to believe that about me, but I do.
  - t_mann 4y ago
    > As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Where does your understanding derive from? Reducing macroeconomics to "reducing labor costs" is akin to reducing classical mechanics to "computing projectile trajectories". I don't know Christensen but I take it that he's a business school professor and I guess that was the target audience he was speaking to there. You're not wrong that economics is a discipline that is not free from ideological biases, but I guess you're going a bit far in reducing the discipline to that. People still want to answer questions with data, like "what happens to unemployment (and exchange rates, and investment,...) if we raise interest rates?". Labor economics might ask more narrow questions like "what happens if we raise the minimum wage?". That's the sort of questions that economics deals with, not musing over the semantics of creation vs discovery.
Symmetry 4y ago
And while we're at it, if a tree falls in a forest with nobody around to hear, does it make a sound? I don't think there's any difference of facts to debate around created or discovered, just semantics.

I ask this question every so often on economic threads - Are jobs created or discovered? What field of study is most associated with "new jobs"?

by csours 4y ago

I ask this question every so often on economic threads - Are jobs created or discovered? What field of study is most associated with "new jobs"?

tuatoru 4y ago

What is the difference between "created" and "discovered" when it comes to jobs? Was "social media manager" created or discovered? How about (to take an older example) telex operator?

peteradio 4y ago

spark+kindling+gust

vorpalhex 4y ago

Jobs are more often created than discovered. Tomorrow we might discover a new kind of math, requiring newly trained mathmeticians in a novel field. Those mathmeticians will need admins, business services, places to work, food, etc. Thus even the discovery of a few jobs has more jobs created than found.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
The mathematicians don't need any more food than they did before the new kind of math was discovered. Why would you count that as job creation?
- carlmr 4y ago
  The single mathematician no, but a new field would lead to the creation of a new building with new people at some point.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    Every one of the people in that building needs the same amount of food they did before they moved in.
    - jhundal 4y ago
      Same amount of food yes. But if a mathematician was just sitting on the sidelines before this new field, they may decide it is more productive to trade time they spent on preparing food for more time to spend on math.
      - lupire 4y ago
        That's just moving the food job somewhere else. It's not clear that this thread is about. Jobs a weak approximation of utility creation + equalit of the distribution of that utility.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Having food is not the hard part, the logistics of food is the hard part. Feeding one person is easy. Feeding 200 people with a mix of allergies is hard.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    On the other hand, when you're already feeding 4000 people, feeding 4200 people is not noticeably harder.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

I don't think that's particularly relevant here. We're going to see jobs open up in the US (and Canada) because even with higher labor costs, the strong dollar and available energy will make it easy to purchase goods and build things here. They won't be novel jobs so much as leveraging an absolute economic advantage against every pretty much every other nation on earth to steal jobs from other countries. But I guess to answer the question, jobs, especially at the bottom are "enabled" more than anything. We want people to do simple tasks, but tech advancements make it efficient enough to actually pay people to do it. Like rideshare drivers, ignoring valid claims about vc money burning. Some new types of jobs might be created or discovered but most jobs changes are about determining whether its viable to pay something to do something you want to do. The idea to have them do it has always been there.

t_mann 4y ago

The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics. I don't understand your other question, so it's hard to answer. What do you mean by "discovered"? Discovered by whom, the employer or the the employee? But you may be interested in knowing that models of labor markets are often based on matching models - you've got two groups (employers, employees) and everyobdy is trying to find {one,many} members of the other group that are a good match.

csours 4y ago
> The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Job discovery is a phrase used by Clayton Christensen to describe finding a job to be done. He uses it to describe finding a product to sell to people to perform some function in their lives - a job to be done by a product that you make. I'm using it as an alternative to the idea of "job creation" because I don't think that's real. There is a certain political narrative about job creation and job creators. I tried to find support for it in academia and I could not. I didn't want to put all this in my original question because then I would only get political replies. --- About politics - Yes my question has some political motivation, but I am genuinely interested in the subject. My motivation is not to prove or disprove, but to learn. You don't have to believe that about me, but I do.
- t_mann 4y ago
  > As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Where does your understanding derive from? Reducing macroeconomics to "reducing labor costs" is akin to reducing classical mechanics to "computing projectile trajectories". I don't know Christensen but I take it that he's a business school professor and I guess that was the target audience he was speaking to there. You're not wrong that economics is a discipline that is not free from ideological biases, but I guess you're going a bit far in reducing the discipline to that. People still want to answer questions with data, like "what happens to unemployment (and exchange rates, and investment,...) if we raise interest rates?". Labor economics might ask more narrow questions like "what happens if we raise the minimum wage?". That's the sort of questions that economics deals with, not musing over the semantics of creation vs discovery.

Symmetry 4y ago

And while we're at it, if a tree falls in a forest with nobody around to hear, does it make a sound? I don't think there's any difference of facts to debate around created or discovered, just semantics.