White House sees about 2.6M new U.S. jobs in 2004

[DemoCoder]

He's just mad cause the only jobs you can get in France are McGovernment civil service bureaucracy jobs.

Yeah, why enjoy 5 weeks of paid vacation a year when you could be flippin' burgers at Mickey D's for a whopping 6 bucks an hour?

I enjoy a job that pays 3 weeks of vacation per year, allows me to work from home, and at triple the salary French paper pushers dream of.

My outlook on life goes beyond getting a job that I don't care about except doing my 35-40hrs a week and 5 weeks vacation. Work should be a pleasure, not a neccessary evil with which I have to be "at odds" with.

 

[L233]

One fourth of the French workforce is employed by the government.

Does that number include Renault and such?

I'd like to see the source of that number because some key industries in France are state owned (i.e. the state holds majority share).

If the 25% number includes those companies then your argument is rather bogus because we are not exclusively talking about bureaucrats.

Personally, I find it rather hard to believe that every member of the French national workforce pays the salary for 1/3 bureaucrat.

 

[L233]

I enjoy a job that pays 3 weeks of vacation per year, allows me to work from home, and at triple the salary French paper pushers dream of.

Well, you're a lucky man. The reality looks differently though for the majority of employees. What's your point?

 

[DemoCoder]

The number I have is civil servants: e.g. postal employees, etc. It does not include the entire "public sector", nor does not include the armed forces nor joint state/private owned corporations.

If you want to see the trend in the French civil service vs other OECD countries, look here: http://www1.oecd.org/puma/hrm/pubs/scs99.htm


Roughly 3 times as many french work for their government as compared to British, as a percentage of population. French civil servant unions are unbeatable.

 

[Vince]

Well, you're a lucky man. The reality looks differently though for the majority of employees. What's your point?

With all due respect and I don't intend to infer anything about you; but I don't exactly think "luck" had anything to do with it from the little I've heard. I'm guessing he didn't wake up one morning to find himself in a bizzare land, suddenly educated and with a top paying job. There is no such thing as luck, you make your own luck in this world and it's called perseverence and hard work.

 

[DemoCoder]

I enjoy a job that pays 3 weeks of vacation per year, allows me to work from home, and at triple the salary French paper pushers dream of.

Well, you're a lucky man. The reality looks differently though for the majority of employees. What's your point?

That I would not have as much opportunity in France as I do in the US.

And "luck" had little to do with it. I have had atleast 5 different jobs since 1996, all of them paying more than $70k, and neither of my parents ever made more than $30k, in fact, my mom worked at a McJob, and my dad was a warehouse attendant, and I grew up in a burnt out inner city.


I never understood this fascination with reducing the work week and adding vacation. Do people in France care so little for their work they they need to stop working 2 months per year, and be "disengaged" from their career the other 40% of the time? If I take more than 2 weeks vacation, I start to feel like I am wasting my life away, and start to year for something constructive and intellectual.

If you've taken a job just for the money, and not because you love doing it, you have a problem, and it should not be up to the government to give you genenous vacation and time off because you "hate" your job so much.

I guess I'm "lucky" that I'm a geek and I love science and engineering so much, and those passions just happen to be highly valued by society today. I guess you could call it lucky. Perhaps someone who had no passion, except maybe to "hang out" and party around, and works for the Post Office in France is "unlucky" in that society doesn't seem to value those "skills" today.

In no way do I mention my salary to "brag". Plenty of other people more successful to me. I just happen to think that there is more social mobility, freedom, and meritocracy here, and that union rules, and "seniority" are antithetical to the values I hold.

 

[Natoma]

Oh now I get it.

Hmm.. I think what they're probably talking about is something along the lines of raising the minimum wages, as well as instituting worker protections in 3rd world nations, before we send our money to those countries. That way once people start working, they won't be exploited en masse like they were during our own industrial revolution, ~120 years ago.

I think.

You don't think.

You want your cake and eat the whole thing at once. "once people start working..." So, in your mind, it is better for someone not to be working at all, or working for even worse wages, then be "exploited" by a foreign company? Is it better to employ 20,000 at $1hr with "benefits" or 60,000 at 50cents/hr, if the alternative was living off humantarian donatations, or working for a local employer at even less?

Why is it that us westerners got go through our own hard-nosed capitalist phase with high growth, creative destruction, fight for our rights ourselves, and evolve protections slowly and democratically over a long period, but we must deny this route to others. Hey, let's just impose OSHA-style rules on those Indian call centers. Aeron chairs and ergonomic keyboards for everyone! That oughta stop the oursourcing!

Hey, let's set the wage to $5/hr in Malayasia, right? That will do the greatest good for the greatest number eh?

First off, get off your high horse DemoCoder. Russ asked for an explanation and I gave one that I thought "anti-globalists" would give, i.e. why they think the way they think.

If you want to discuss this topic in a mature fashion without the unprovoked insults, then I suggest you change your tone. Until then,

 

[pax]

Its already a faux pas to introduce your own anecdotal example vs others. Its also pathetic to showcase the us example as if it was only work ethic that made the us wealthy. Ill take german, japanese and afew other asian work ethic over american anyday...

The french arent asking you to slack off they choose to live life a bit more for lifes sake and not the almighty buck. The neither envy in general nor seek your lifestyle. So you prefer latchkey kids and 60-80 work weeks and 6 digit wages? Fine if thaqts what you call a good life. The french Ive met are happy... and isnt the pursuit of happiness the important thing? *cough* constitution *cough*...

Seems to me the french economy isnt doing that badly. Also isnt the purpose of history to learn from it demo? So we should let the third world go thru its own darwinistic hell for another century or 2 simply because we went thru it? And learned to reject and severely control abuses of an unregualted market? What kind of warped karma bullshit is that?

Do you honestly think with technology and knowledge's propensity for self propagation that we wont reap a whirlwind if we let them go thru such brutality?

 

[Humus]

Problem is though pax that it's completely unrealistic to think that we can apply the standards of the west to third world countries immediately. When anti-globalists cry because workers hired by western companies aren't paying western standard salaries, or that they aren't given retirement bonuses, healthcare options and all that stuff, and therefore demand that for companies to outsource to these countries they must hire to the same benefits as in the west, they are doing the people of the third world a terrible disservice, even if that's not the intent. If you as a citizen of a third world country got the choice between a McJob and a income, or no job and starvation, I would surely choose the former. Point is, why would anyone invest in a foreign country if it's not cheaper, or even more expensive than investing at home? If however, companies are allowed to enter these market and pay bad salaries compared to what we get in the west, then their economy will grow and soon enough they can afford all the other things with health care and all that. Also, anti-globalists tend to ignore that a west imported McJob in the third world often have a very high salary compared to what they get if they got employed in the local industry. Often 5 times as much. Taking these opportunity away from them is just cruel IMHO, and doesn't benefit anyone.

We sure should learn from history, and the history tells us that capitalism and democracy are the key to success. If these key learnings were applied to third world countries, they become soon become first world countries, and faster than the countries that had to do it the first time. South Korea is a great example. They went from poverty comparable to many african countries to a high-tech western country in just three decades. Now that they have reached this level, they can start thinking about quality of life and all that, and last year they reduced the work week from six days to five. They can afford that now, but they needed the long work week during the years they built up the country.

Every time we compare people's situation, we shouldn't compare them to us, but to these people's former situation.

 

[pax]

Any standards cant be western at the outset no but they should take into consideration the cost of living in their respective countries. Safety and pollution standards are however universal. What we have now is much worse than dickensian England. And with the current level of productivity and tech I dont see how increasing competition for jobs by introducing the worldwide levels of unemployment, which are about 30%, to western countries will help in the long run. There are certainly benefits to seeing investment in the third world in the current system but there are consequences as well. Neither are well covered by the media ...

The workless economy is well underway. Locally, nationally I regularly see layoffs accompanied with production stability or even large production increases thru modernization. Its all good but the benefits of that are not being spread about properly. Govs are desperate to keep biz local so they give larger tax breaks year after year yet see increasing medicare and social costs due mostly to aging. Think I saw natoma say obesity was a major prob which it is but its nowhere near aging. 85% of HC consumed in canada is by people over 65. But alzheimers, if we dont find a cure for it, will swallow the entire HC budget in 20 years...

I dont give a red cent to heart disease. Or most cancer charities... but by damn I give to alzheimers...

I agree that in some cases their former situation wasnt very good but in some it was actually better. However before modern medicine greatly increased population levels. That made subsistence farming unsustainable in some areas.

Capitalism when properly regulated and democracy when functional certainly are the best combo. What I like to see addressed is the inadequacies in both. What should be tweeked to keep them viable. If the transitions to proper democracy and capitalism is too brutal we could see its rejection. Civilisation isnt the rock we think it is. Its quite fragile.

The argument in policies that would moderate the profit gains from outsourcing is that the biz should look forward to those areas becoming healthy markets themselves sooner. Of course they shouldnt be completely removed. And I dont think they would be in respecting at the very least local costs of living.

 

[Humus]

But what you call "brutal capitalism" is what these people call "I finally got food om my table". It may be brutal in that not everyone get their standard raised immediately, but that's a lot better than noone getting their standard improved.

Plus, it's a flawed argument to think that their unemployment will spread here. The number of jobs isn't constant. The jobs are proportional to the number of people involved in the economic wheel. If you add another country, you add as many jobs as there are people in that country. We send jobs and capital there, and they will consume it which will create new jobs at home. You may see some short term negatives, but long term it's mutually beneficial.

 

[Geeforcer]

I think that much opposition to globalization derives simply from the fact that it's zero-sum. A rise in standard of living in 3rd world countries is associated with a drop in SOL in the job-donors. This becomes a particular problem with high skill, high paying The economic systems of many western countries, such as US, are inwards-oriented. A engineer graduating from college in the US is geared towers competing with other US engineers, but is ill-prepared to compete on the global market with a Chinese and Indian engineers - the much higher cost of things like education and healthcare puts him/her at an inherent disadvantage. The reforms required for a country to make its workforce globally competitive are extensive and time-consuming. As the result, instead of instituting the changes necessary for country’s economy to successfully integrate into global job market, some see it a beneficial to create barriers to capital and job migration as an attempt to maintain the overall standard of living. Of course, there are various problems with that approach, such as that the lower manufacturing costs result in a cheaper prices and thus effectively increase the standard of living – the counter-agreement often is that the decline in overall SOL due to job loss is not fully offset by the decline in prices of good as services, since some of that is absorbed as increase in corporate profits – after all, the motive for outsourcing is profit maximization.

Of course, most of the arguments against globalization are self-serving, but understandable: when one is faced with a prospect of a job loss with no chance of finding a similar-paying replacement, the concepts such as efficiency and 3rd world SOL-increase take a back seat so self-preservation

 

[DemoCoder]

But it's not zero-sum. The implication of zero sum is that there is a fixed amount of stuff demanded, and a fixed number of jobs required to produce a matching supply. The idea that, for example, you can raise South Koreans from abject poverty to modern western state, and the entire process was "zero sum" and those rich South Koreans simply got all their money from westerners and don't increase global demand for goods themselves is absurd.

The question is, if you employ a third world worker and turn him into a consumer, is there a multiplier effect? The answer is yes. First generations will still be more thrifty, since poverty makes people careful with their money, but later generations will likely enter the world's economy as full on consumers, just as we saw in Japan and Korea.


Surely, for example, the creation of say, 300 million Chinese "middle class" will result in a tangible increase in global demand for goods and services. The only way the process would be zero sum is if these hypothetical chinese middle class would be completely self-sufficient and would not demand any goods from the Western nations that were buying their exports. Of course, it's false, since Chinese's trade balance with the rest of the world is almost even, yet China has raised the standard of living considerably in many provinces. Where'd the money come from? From surplus value of productivity gains brought on by foreign investment.


There's just no way educating an illiterate person and providing them a job is a net-zero sum for the world, even if a westerner's standard of living declines, since I'd argue that a fully functional skilled and educated person is a net gain to the world's economy.

 

[pax]

Well the reality is that japan and many asian nations are still way too heavily dependant on exports. What one economist said was a perverse economy in speaking about japan. Where people work and produce plenty but dont consume. So its not zero sum gain but its not healthy gain either. How long will the us economy be there to sustain their crutch in the form of exports?

Transitions can cost a nation and civ if its not handled right. We're not in the age of muskets anymore. The next bad revolution like we saw in France or Russia and may soon again in Russia may include much worse conflicts and Im not so sure we can rely on deterrent or the pond if things get bad enough.

The fact is we can easily and cheaply smooth the transition. Even many conservatives see that.

I see China doing just about all the right things for its economy but it remains to be seen if they will rely on exports for as long as the japanese did and still do... I dont think they will make the same mistakes tho. Everything points to china wanting internal consumption provided by internal production with protections until its economy matures like we did in the 19th century. As for their dictatorship and paltry incomes and insane unemployment at least they have a socialist gov to take care of that. The only reason for their trade balance is oil imports. Im more worried now about mexico and classic third world societies.

 

[Clashman]

Where would I look? I perused BLS.GOV and didn't find any breakdowns of the jobs...of course I didn't look very closely or for very long.

Perhaps you could point me to some statistics about what types of jobs were created?

They're kinda hard to find, but if you look through the reuters and AP pieces on each month, they sometimes give a breakdown of where jobs were created:

January:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040206/us_nm/economy_dc_24

Many of the new jobs in January came from a 76,000 increase in the retail sector.

The Labor Department said some retailers took on fewer employees than expected in November and December for the holiday season. This meant they did not shed as many afterwards, affecting the seasonal adjustment factor.

December: (Which was revised up by 15,000 jobs)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...p;contentId=A2949-2004Jan9&notFound=truel

Manufacturers shed 26,000 jobs in December, cutting payrolls for the 41st straight month. Weak holiday hiring was blamed for a loss of 38,000 retail jobs, after seasonal adjustment

Among the employers that added workers were those in professional, business, education and health services and construction.

Temporary employment continued to rise, a trend that economists usually consider to be a precursor to hiring permanent workers, thinking that businesses will fill permanent slots once they are sure that a pickup in demand will continue. But Sohn, noting that temporary employment rose by 30,000 jobs last month and 166,000 jobs last year, said businesses appear to be hiring temporary workers increasingly as a substitute for permanent employees.

November: (Which was revised down with October by 51,000 jobs)
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm?id=1567

Another indicator of current weak conditions is the increase in involuntary part-time workers (i.e., those who would prefer a full-time job). There are now 4.9 million of these workers, up 97,000 since last month and 1.6 million since the recession began. While the unemployment rate does not include involuntary part-time workers, they are counted in the "underemployment rate," which was 10.1% in November.*

On the positive side, while job gains were moderate, the construction sector and many service industries continue to add jobs. Business services added 20,000 jobs, driven by continued gains in temporary hiring, another sign of employers' caution regarding permanent hires. Health services continued to grow, as did hotels and restaurants, adding 25,000 and 21,000 jobs, respectively.

Manufacturing lost 17,000 jobs, and while losses in this sector have moderated recently, this is the 40th consecutive month of declines, dashing hopes that recent strength in manufacturing activity would finally boost employment in that vital sector.

The loss of quality jobs, such as those in manufacturing, has led to lower average wages among industries gaining jobs relative to those industries that are losing jobs. EPI analysis of private-sector employment over the recovery reveals that since the recovery began, the sectors that have added jobs pay lower wages than those industries that have shed jobs. Sectors gaining employment pay an average of $14.65 per hour, while sectors losing jobs pay $16.92.

October: (Revised down with November by 51,000 jobs)
(Yes, it's a commentary, but had the most complete breakdown of job creation I could find).

Only a few of the 116,000 private-sector jobs created in October provide good incomes: 6,000 new positions in legal services and accounting ? activities that reflect corporations gearing up to protect their top executives from Sarbanes-Oxley.
The remainder of the 116,000 new jobs consist of temps, retail trade, telephone marketing and fund raising, administrative and waste services, and private education and health services.
Physicians' offices hired 9,000 people to cope with Medicare and insurance company paperwork. Nursing and residential care facilities hired 5,000, child-care services hired 6,000, and hospitals hired 3,000. Many of the new jobs do not pay enough to support a family. The temp and retail jobs are 40 percent of the total.

So looking at that, there are a whole lot of temp jobs, PT, WalMart Jobs, etc, but not neccessarily a whole lot of much else.

 

[RussSchultz]

First off, thanks for the info. I'm not denigrating it, or you, or your take on it. But...

I dunno, I see office jobs, health care, and other non-McJobs or "Walmart" type positions added to the mix of jobs created. Everybody's got an agenda, and it makes me suspicious when they report some numbers, or not others.

Its interesting as some data points, and I'm not dismissing it, but I'd like to see the actual numbers, so I can make my own decisions, rather than have it filtered through a news person and/or a "non partisan"(ha!) think tank.

 

[Geeforcer]

But it's not zero-sum. The implication of zero sum is that there is a fixed amount of stuff demanded, and a fixed number of jobs required to produce a matching supply. The idea that, for example, you can raise South Koreans from abject poverty to modern western state, and the entire process was "zero sum" and those rich South Koreans simply got all their money from westerners and don't increase global demand for goods themselves is absurd.

The question is, if you employ a third world worker and turn him into a consumer, is there a multiplier effect? The answer is yes. First generations will still be more thrifty, since poverty makes people careful with their money, but later generations will likely enter the world's economy as full on consumers, just as we saw in Japan and Korea.


Surely, for example, the creation of say, 300 million Chinese "middle class" will result in a tangible increase in global demand for goods and services. The only way the process would be zero sum is if these hypothetical chinese middle class would be completely self-sufficient and would not demand any goods from the Western nations that were buying their exports. Of course, it's false, since Chinese's trade balance with the rest of the world is almost even, yet China has raised the standard of living considerably in many provinces. Where'd the money come from? From surplus value of productivity gains brought on by foreign investment.


There's just no way educating an illiterate person and providing them a job is a net-zero sum for the world, even if a westerner's standard of living declines, since I'd argue that a fully functional skilled and educated person is a net gain to the world's economy.

Somewhat unclear wording notwithstanding, I was just trying to present some of the arguments being presented against globalization, as per someone's request and trying not to take on side or the other. Most of the arguments against globalization stem from tried and true protectionism and are not going to going to go over well with anyone who recognizes and acknowledges the efficiency of capitalism.

Regarding on whether the globalization is zero-sum, I think the jury is still out on that. While surely the 300 million Chinese middle class will increase China's consumption of good and serviced, if there jobs come at the expense of the similar expense of a decline in the western countries, there is certainly a chance that most of that demand increase will be offset by decline in consumption in job-donor counties while the other will be observed as corporate profit, not all of which will be re-invested. This is particularly true with the high paying, high skill jobs, and if the job migration proceeds at higher rate then that of the economic adaptation (as seems to be the case), there will certainly be some among of economic disruption. This is certainly different from the era of manufacturing migration - a highly specialized job that required many years of very costly higher education is not easily replaced with one providing comparable income. Therefore, it's only natural that people who invested so much would want to retain their jobs at all costs, big picture be dammed. Erecting trade barriers in attempt to stem the inevitable will not work in the long term, but I think there is some validity to the argument that national economies can not adapt quickly enough to the global market, to the detriment of their population.( BTW, since we are on the subject of China, AFAIK the Yuan is artificially pegged to the dollar, casting some doubt on how free the trade really is)

Another argument is a seeming disparity between macro and micro efficiency. A ton of steel made in China costs less then that produced in the US, therefore in the strict sense of the word the Chinese are more efficient at producing steel. However, a Chinese steel mill employs over 25,000 people as opposed to 2,000 in the US, while outputting 30% less of lesser grade steel and about 50 times more environmental pollution (the numbers are from an article comparing two particular mills I read a few years back). While I think there is validity to your argument that developing nations should be allowed to grow through a laissez-fair (if that concept is applicable in a totalitarian country) stage of their own, things such as pollution are becoming and increasingly global concern.

Finally, there is a purely nationalistic, Machiavellian (and somewhat, for the lack of a better term, racist) argument being advanced by some that is not in our (as in American) national interest for standard of living to increase in 3rd world countries, since the material resources are finite and perishable. The argument goes along the lines that the poorer these countries are, the cheaper and easily accessible will the unskilled labor be; the weak and corrupt governments will be unable to establish effective taxation and corporate governance systems thus increasing profits; there will be smaller chance of ingenious intersperses capable of competing with foreign ones and finally the low standard of living will keep the worldwide demand (and thus price) for natural resources at a relatively low level. This school of though particularly focuses on energy prices and contends that if billions of people in developing countries were to begin approaching the standard of living enjoyed in the west, the increased demand and competition for resources would have an adverse effect on countries that now consume most of the said resources. I recall reading the article titled along the lines "World Cannot Afford a Wealthy China" (author’s name and publication sadly escapes me) which contends that due to resource scarcity developing nations must never be allowed to actually develop, lest it result in fierce competition for natural resources and come at the expense of developed nations.


Advanced apology for typos.

 

[Humus]

Those are pretty flawed arguments however, because it assumes that resources are constant. Truth is, we produce resource. A wealthy China will also produce resources. Capitalism also balances itself. It a certain resource runs low, such as steel, then prices goes up and therefore consumtion down. Since price is high however producing steel would then be highly profitable, thus lot of effort is put into producing and more importantly recycling steel. Also, those arguments assume the world is static. As if steel, oil and other resources will always be demanded. If price goes up too much on steel, people will look for alternative materials. How says houses will be built of steel and concrete in the future? Or cars fueled by gasoline?

Another argument is a seeming disparity between macro and micro efficiency. A ton of steel made in China costs less then that produced in the US, therefore in the strict sense of the word the Chinese are more efficient at producing steel. However, a Chinese steel mill employs over 25,000 people as opposed to 2,000 in the US, while outputting 30% less of lesser grade steel and about 50 times more environmental pollution (the numbers are from an article comparing two particular mills I read a few years back). While I think there is validity to your argument that developing nations should be allowed to grow through a laissez-fair (if that concept is applicable in a totalitarian country) stage of their own, things such as pollution are becoming and increasingly global concern.

The chinese facility may not be more efficient, but when you buy their products capital moves to the owners of the facility. They will invest this in improvements of their capabilities and soon enough their efficiency will improve and at some point maybe even match american facilities. After they have developed enough economically they can also afford to put environment restrictions in place too. It's often assumed that the environment is generally getting worse all over the world, but the truth is actually the other way around. The environment keeps getting better. There's no smog over most cities today. Today's cars are cleaner than yesterday's. Today's facilities are cleaner than yesterday's. I don't have numbers for other countries, but in Sweden the environment have been improving since the 70s. In third world countries they will see more environment degradation for a while, especially when they go through the industrialisation phase, but that's just a temporary phase.