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Why American Workers Without Much Education Are Being Hammered
- randomname2 12y agoThe point of the article is interesting, among those who have a job at all, managerial workers and independent professionals are making more money while the majority of workers are making less. However while uneducated "workers" may be suffering, among the educated there are more and more "non-workers": https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11327662 https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11327662
- blfr 12y agoThe article doesn't mention immigration even in passing. Sure, there's globalization and improvements in technology but there are also millions of people increasing the supply of labour, especially for jobs that don't require much skill or certification.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y agoIs there a corresponding increase in immigration over time? As far as I know (in my lifetime) there have always been migrant laborers.
- humanrebar 12y ago> Is there a corresponding increase in immigration over time? 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.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y agoI'd like to see some credible data showing that.
- panglott 12y agoInteresting, there seems to be some truth to this. I've known that immigration was a major cause of US population growth. http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/03/15-immigrant-workers-singer#3 http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/03/15-immigran... 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.
- afarrell 12y agoWho is the "we" that isn't talking about it?
- humanrebar 12y agoI was trying to be inclusive, but in particular, I'm talking about the NYT article that was posted.
- snowwrestler 12y agoThat's a pretty gross statistic. I don't have the reference handy but as I recall if you graph wage growth vs immigration on an annual or more granular basis, there is no significant correlation.
- humanrebar 12y agoAnd it doesn't mention that even the most educated workers are not keeping pace with real GDP growth. 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?
- RobertoG 12y agoWhat are the jobs without 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)
- humanrebar 12y agoAll jobs have expiration dates unless you're independently wealthy. That's why, for decades, commencement addresses have repeated factoids about the inevitability of career change. 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.
- tormeh 12y agoReasons for lack of demand: -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
- normloman 12y ago
- briandear 12y agoThe NY Times wouldn't mention immigration because that would harm the Ehite House narrative about how 'good' it will be to open the borders and provide amnesty. The people that are most conditioned to vote democrat (the poor) are the ones who are ultimately harmed the most from increasing immigration and reducing deportations. However by increasing immigration, presumably the Democrats think that they will add enough votes to offset the potential loss of votes from the existing American lower classes who are most profoundly harmed by illegal immigration and the so-called 'path to citizenship.' 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.
- 01Michael10 12y ago>The NY Times wouldn't mention immigration because that would harm the Ehite House narrative about how 'good' it will be to open the borders and provide amnesty. I didn't realize the NY Times was an operative of the Obama administration...
- DamnYuppie 12y agoAn operative makes it sound like they are under the thumb of the administration. Which I doubt to be accurate, yet I would say they are co-conspirators who share the same left wing agenda.
- 01Michael10 12y agoOK... This left wing agenda thing must be new with the NY Times. It sure looked like they were "co-conspirators" with the Bush administration when they refused or didn't bother to investigate the administrations claims about weapons of mass destruction Saddam supposedly had... They were practically promoting another war with Iraq.
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- twoodfin 12y agoI agree it's a glaring oversight, but I don't think it's a supply/demand effect so much as a demographic shift: I'd bet that the group of American working men ages 30-45 without a high school diploma now tilts much more heavily first-generation immigrant than it did in 1990. The percentage of native born Americans with high school diplomas has risen pretty consistently over that period, and immigrants as a % of the population has been spiking since 1970, rising from 8% to 13% from 1990-2013.[1] 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/immigrant-population-over-time?width=1000&height=850&iframe=true http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immi... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States#Foreign_born_.26_Immigrants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...
- adjwilli 12y agoAnd it doesn't mention civil rights or feminism either. There may be various cultural phenomenons that play a part in increasing the labor supply, but enforcing barriers to entry disregards the dignity of people. The fact is, if you want to be materially successful in life you have to compete (at least in some way) with everyone you share the Earth with. You can't stop immigration any more than you can stop oppressed people from wanting to be free. The point of the article is though to remind us educated NYTimes readers that while we might be sitting pretty, there are certain classes of society who are getting left behind.
- yummyfajitas 12y agoThe fact that lowering barriers to entry (by people unfortunate enough to be born black, female or foreign) is a normative good does not mean that an article should ignore them - they are still possible positive causes of low income workers "getting hammered". If they are a primary cause, then the correct response is just to accept that good things may have tradeoffs.
- mc32 12y agoCuriously the media typically are against immigration of the professional classes, think doctors, lawyers, journalists, accountants, etc. but typically are in favor of uneducated immigration -now industry wants both because it makes the labor supply cheaper, activists typically only look after the uneducated immigrant pool and hardly care about fighting for immigrant professionals. 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...
- caseysoftware 12y ago
- ck2 12y agoThe trade deal Obama really wants to sign is going to put the final nail in the uneducated worker's coffin. Every remaining low wage job that can be exported, will be exported. The rest will be automated as much as possible. 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.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y agoIf we really go that route, the whole thing will fall apart soon after food becomes unaffordable. Most of us are not moral enough to starve.
- briandear 12y agoThe legalization of millions of illegal immigrants is really going to seal the deal.
- kfk 12y agoIt is worth mentioning that an economy that produces higher added value will have a fallback on the lower classes too. While the delta in wealth between the rich and the poor has been increasing, in relative terms the poor have been getting richer. A poor today is way better than a poor 50 years ago or even 20 years ago. If you are concerned about what poor people can do, then think to all those products that now are too expensive but that a future richer society might want. For instance, in Germany (richer country than mine), is very normal to buy local/bio/laborIntensive goods like traditional food and so on, this is all stuff that non educated people can do and will do in the future.
- Shivetya 12y agoHaving worked for a security company; rent a cops; I was surprised by the types of people who took up the job. While there is a good amount of turnover there are many who are there for life. Most had a high school diploma and some had more. We did have college kids working their way from school, sitting at a post and doing periodic walks does lend time to study and it wasn't discouraged. 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.
- briandear 12y agoIs there causation between no high school diploma and lower wages? They are certainly correlated.
- njharman 12y agoI always assumed (and still believe) they are both (lack of eduction, lack of well paying employment) are both results of other root causes. In other words if you couldn't make it through high-school or college (for whatever reason, ability, environment, access, attitude, etc) then whatever those reasons are make you also unable to acquire and keep a decent job.
- zo1 12y ago>"[..]then whatever those reasons are make you also unable to acquire and keep a decent job." 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.
- JustSomeNobody 12y agoWe supposed to neuter people?
- zo1 12y agoOf course not, that's horrible. 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.
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- deedubaya 12y agoMaybe the correlation isn't education => low paying jobs, but motivation => low paying jobs? 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.
- deedubaya 12y agoWhoa, why the downvotes? Did I strike a nerve?
- WalterSear 12y agoYou didn't contribute anything useful to the discussion.
- deedubaya 12y ago> You didn't contribute anything useful to the discussion. I purposed an alternative possibility! Ha, what a joke!
- jellicle 12y agoYou can see that the population gets these sudden bursts of laziness over time, which oddly are correlated with the business cycle: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/03/an-epidemic-of-laziness/ http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/03/an-epidemic-of-laziness... Lazy takers!
- deedubaya 12y agoI knew something like this would be a reply, of course. 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.
- snowwrestler 12y agoThe above will be a controversial post because there are plenty of highly motivated people who work hard but never get rich. For example a day laborer construction worker has to get up very early, perform tiring physical labor all day, and then do it again the next day. Many work more than 5 days per week to make ends meet. I bet that not many web developers could make it as a day laborer for long! 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.
- dataker 12y agoThe article should be named' Why Blue-Collar Workers Are Being Hammered'. 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
- genericresponse 12y agoIt's the same for the bulk of white collar workers as well in most industries, they just stagnate later.
- peterfirefly 12y agoI think that was what dataker meant (but I'm not quite sure): > - With the same stagnation, blue-collar salaries become 'higher' and most workers are complacent about it
- dataker 12y agoWhite collars have always had better salary growth than others. 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.
- CodeSheikh 12y agoMin wage should be increased by certain significant percentage but definitely not by 100% to $15. That is basically saying "no need to study in high school or go to college because you can still make around 30k based on min wage". 30k is a starting salary for a lot of college fresh graduates. This could in-return can also create economic imbalance among classes (abridging the gap between high school drop out and fresh college graduate)
- danans 12y agoLocal minimum wages should be raised in a manner commensurate with local inflation. In places like the Bay Area and NYC, $15/hr isn't much considering the enormous cost of living - hence the term "living wage". $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).
- CodeSheikh 12y agobtw..why on the earth this article is on HN?! Are people comparing tech worker salaries as an ideal model for the entire economic class? I am confused by the upvoters here.
- randomdata 12y agoThere is always infighting on HN of whether a degree is important for being a developer. As such, anything that paints education in a positive, or negative, light will reach the front page.
- NTDF9 12y agoAre we really this Myopic? 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.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago>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. 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.
- NTDF9 12y ago>> Because they built a society that can provide it. To everyone. 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.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago