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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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 Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 7:25 pm Post subject: As Low-Skilled Jobs Disappear, Men Drop Out of the Workforce |
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http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/20/as-low-skilled-jobs-disappear-men-drop-out-of-the-workforce/
I like how the article entertains the notion that experts are baffled as to why this has happened.
Anyone with common sense knows that when...
1. Jobs are transferred oerseas
2. Nasty illegal's are working the remain jobs
....this is going to happen..especially with the "War on Women".
As Low-Skilled Jobs Disappear, Men Drop Out of the Workforce
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White House study looks at the causes of falling participation rates among men
U.S. manufacturing employment is about 37% below its 1979 peak. The loss of factory jobs may be one reason men have been dropping out of the labor force. ENLARGE
U.S. manufacturing employment is about 37% below its 1979 peak. The loss of factory jobs may be one reason men have been dropping out of the labor force. PHOTO: DAVID MCNEW/GETTY IMAGES
By JEFFREY SPARSHOTT
Jun 20, 2016 3:27 pm ET
167 COMMENTS
Why aren’t men in the prime of their lives working more?
Working-age males have been sitting on the sidelines in greater numbers for decades, a trend that accelerated during the latest recession and has broad implications for individual well-being as well as the overall economy.
A new White House study highlights the sharpest decline among men with lower levels of educational attainment and concludes much of the cause is a loss of economic opportunity for those would-be workers.
“No single factor can fully explain this decline, but analysis suggests that a reduction in the demand for less skilled labor has been a key cause of declining participation rates as well as lower wages for less skilled workers,” the Council of Economic Advisers said in the report.
Labor-force participation among men between the ages 25 to 54 topped out at 97.9% in 1954. For about five decades, it has been heading steadily lower, punctuated by steeper falls during recessions. That’s a troubling phenomenon for individuals who should be at their peak, improving prospects for themselves and their families and contributing to the economy.
Participation appears to have stabilized but it’s still below levels at the end of the recession despite years of steady job creation, falling unemployment rates and signs of a tighter labor market.
The root causes have puzzled economists and pushed politicians to assign blame to everything from government programs such as disability insurance and international trade to immigration and simple demographics.
The White House study zeros in on the sharp divergence in participation rates by educational attainment and ethnicity. In the mid-1960s, participation figures nearly matched for those with a college degree and those with a high school degree or less. Last year, the rate for college-educated men was 94%, while the rate for men with at most a high-school diploma was 83%. The rate also has declined most steeply for black men.
Some working men may opt to retire early, go to school or take care of their families. But that’s likely only a small slice of the group. Less than a quarter of prime-age men who aren’t in the workforce have a working spouse.
The White House also dismisses government benefits as a major cause. Social Security Disability Insurance “can explain at most 0.5 percentage point of the decline over this period,” and more than one-third of the men not in the labor force lived in poverty, the CEA study said.
“In contrast, reductions in the demand for labor, especially for lower-skilled men, appear to be an important component of the decline in prime-age male labor force participation,” the report said.
Possible causes include the disappearance of factory jobs, men’s falling educational attainment relative to women and a big rise in incarceration rates. A criminal record limits opportunities once an individual exits the criminal justice system. To be sure, the U.S. correctional population has been slowly declining in recent years–it’s fallen by an annual average of 1% since 2007, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
White House economists also note relatively low male participation rates compared with other developed economies. A lack of government support helping match or train the unemployed for jobs may be to blame.
“Absent policy changes, this long-standing decline could continue, as more Baby Boomers move into retirement, and as younger cohorts enter the labor force at lower rates,” the CEA said. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 6:22 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/men-exiting-workforce-as-low-wage-jobs-vanish.html
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| [T]he problem with European-style job training programs is that US employers do not want to hire people with general training, even in a particular skill area. Their strong preference is to hire someone who is doing the exact same job for a similar company, so as to minimize their effort (in theory; in practice, the extra time spent on the search probably offsets the theoretical savings). The cure for that is a much more robust job market, where employers realize they are not going to find the perfect candidate and take someone approximate and give them the training and other guidance they need to become productive. |
You know the Clintons will be blind to this problem, not because they do not care about rural whites (they do just a little), but because they gulp down the cockamamie neoliberal excuses from their rich donor capitalist compadres.
How many times have I heard Bill Clinton repeat the falsehood that companies want to hire workers but they are not well-enough trained? Bill! Companies always ask for a dozen qualifications and settle for someone with vision or passion who meets half to three-fifths of them.
Anyway, the drop-out of males from the labor force will continue for the foreseeable future. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 6:42 pm Post subject: Re: As Low-Skilled Jobs Disappear, Men Drop Out of the Workf |
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[quote="trueblue"]http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/20/as-low-skilled-jobs-disappear-men-drop-out-of-the-workforce/
I like how the article entertains the notion that experts are baffled as to why this has happened.
Anyone with common sense knows that when...
1. Jobs are transferred oerseas
2. Nasty illegal's are working the remain jobs
....this is going to happen..especially with the "War on Women".[\quote]
Thoughts, why nasty? They are acting exactly as free market capitalism dictates. They see a demand and move, capital sees a source of labor that costs less and the law of the market acts accordingly. Are you some sort of market distorting socialist?
What weird economic system we have when the need for less human drudgery is a major problem.
I was reading a book today that talked about how kings would stop technological progress that would make work more efficient because they were worried that it would disrupt the peasants, I think this mentality will come back in a big way if mechanization keeps pace. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 7:16 pm Post subject: Re: As Low-Skilled Jobs Disappear, Men Drop Out of the Workf |
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| Leon wrote: |
What weird economic system we have when the need for less human drudgery is a major problem. |
That's just it: it's not a need for less "human drudgery," not really. Rather, it's the transfer of "human drudgery" to other populations in order to help a small, already wealthy portion of the population further increase their wealth, with the people who were previously engaged in said "drudgery" being effectively denied access to the prosperity in the bargain. What does that poor fellow in Appalachia or downtown Detroit care if some degree of automation makes your iPad 5% cheaper when it means he can't afford to even raise a family in the bargain? In other words, what you dismiss as "drudgery" was the life line of that fellow and his family. Of course said life line evaporating is a problem, at least if one cares about the well being of one's fellow citizens. If you want to save people from "drudgery," then it must be replaced with viable alternatives, or else all you'll be doing is taking their "drugery" and handing them despair in return. |
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Swartz
Joined: 19 Dec 2014
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 8:31 pm Post subject: Re: As Low-Skilled Jobs Disappear, Men Drop Out of the Workf |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
What weird economic system we have when the need for less human drudgery is a major problem. |
That's just it: it's not a need for less "human drudgery," not really. Rather, it's the transfer of "human drudgery" to other populations in order to help a small, already wealthy portion of the population further increase their wealth, with the people who were previously engaged in said "drudgery" being effectively denied access to the prosperity in the bargain. What does that poor fellow in Appalachia or downtown Detroit care if some degree of automation makes your iPad 5% cheaper when it means he can't afford to even raise a family in the bargain? In other words, what you dismiss as "drudgery" was the life line of that fellow and his family. Of course said life line evaporating is a problem, at least if one cares about the well being of one's fellow citizens. If you want to save people from "drudgery," then it must be replaced with viable alternatives, or else all you'll be doing is taking their "drugery" and handing them despair in return. |
That's correct.
We've seen wages and living standards go down for decades because the primary concern of Western leadership has been to facilitate constant growth upwards even if it means selling out industries and destroying families and communities. But one of the key objectives is to do just that, to destroy those things, so that's why it happens. Any system remotely interested in the health of its own populace would aid families of the future by protecting workers and safeguarding the jobs of males in particular; it wouldn't send their jobs overseas, import cheap foreign labor, lobby for that labor to become permanent citizens, call anyone who disagreed a racist, then turn their nation into a free-trade zone.
The international system predominant in the West, whatever you want to call it, is based around selling its own population out. It's about the free-flow of capital and deregulation, so an international elite can transfer their money around the globe with ease. It's about population replacement. But it's about growth most of all, or the illusion of it. Read any IMF or World Bank report and they will tell you in their own words that it is about growth and capital flow, foreign capital takeover, or any maneuverer that can simulate growth.
Why? That's the scheme here, that's how it was designed. People don't matter, communities don't matter, pleb jobs don't matter. The illusion of growth is all that matters, so a clique of international elites can move their money around freely from place to place, corrupt governments, and buy and sell resources without constraints, to ensure their ability to control national polities.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2016/01/pdf/text.pdf
Those are their goals. Read it in their own words. It's now about internationalism vs nationalism. Nationalism, and ethnic nationalism in particular, is the only way out of this. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 3:00 am Post subject: Re: As Low-Skilled Jobs Disappear, Men Drop Out of the Workf |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
What weird economic system we have when the need for less human drudgery is a major problem. |
That's just it: it's not a need for less "human drudgery," not really. Rather, it's the transfer of "human drudgery" to other populations in order to help a small, already wealthy portion of the population further increase their wealth, with the people who were previously engaged in said "drudgery" being effectively denied access to the prosperity in the bargain. What does that poor fellow in Appalachia or downtown Detroit care if some degree of automation makes your iPad 5% cheaper when it means he can't afford to even raise a family in the bargain? In other words, what you dismiss as "drudgery" was the life line of that fellow and his family. Of course said life line evaporating is a problem, at least if one cares about the well being of one's fellow citizens. If you want to save people from "drudgery," then it must be replaced with viable alternatives, or else all you'll be doing is taking their "drugery" and handing them despair in return. |
I thought that last sentence was implied in what I wrote, but maybe not. I think over time the earlier style of a manufacturing middle class is less and less viable and that trying to bring it back is not a realistic long term goal. It's kind of taboo to talk about the viable alternatives in America, though.
That 5% cheaper line about the iPad though, is completely off. Tablets have become exponentially cheaper, to the point where I can buy them on Amazon for less than $50. That's the pace of change that you're dealing with. |
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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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