inkbluesky

Will Your Job Survive?

The threat of globalization and the reality of de-unionization have combined to make the raise, for most Americans, a thing of the past. Between 2001 and 2004, median household income inched up by a meager 1.6 percent, even as productivity was expanding at a robust 11.7 percent. The broadly shared prosperity that characterized our economy in the three decades following World War II is now dead as a dodo.

What Jobs are Safe from Offshoring?

• Thanks to electronic communications and globalization, the future is likely to see much more offshoring of jobs in … impersonal services, that is, services that can be delivered electronically over long distance with little or no degradation of quality.
• Despite all the political sound and fury, little of this service-sector offshoring has happened to date. But it may eventually amount to a Third Industrial Revolution. And industrial revolutions have a way of transforming societies.
• Rich countries will need to shift their work forces away from impersonal services and manufacturing and toward personal services. Unfortunately, Baumol’s disease … implies that the relative prices of personal services are destined to rise inexorably, so that the relative size of this sector may shrink over time.
• That said, the “threat” from offshoring should not be exaggerated. Just as the First Industrial Revolution did not banish agriculture from the rich countries, and the Second Industrial Revolution has not banished manufacturing, the Third Industrial Revolution will not drive all impersonal services off shore. Nor will it lead to mass unemployment. But the necessary adjustments will be large, complex, multifaceted, and difficult.

Free trade can create jobs and be a factor in losing certain jobs. While its probably a bad idea to join the protectionist camp, right now we’re probably too far over in the unregulated column. If you wait on tables or have a medical skill you’re probably safe for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, why hire a 65 thousand dollar a year American programmer, when you can hire an Indian one for less then half that. That phenomenon may effect America’s future tech innovations. What will our colleges look like if we hardly train any of our own engineers or programmers.

Fewer families can afford a home

Nearly 70% of Americans own their homes, a record high, but the rate of homeownership for working families with children is lower than in 1978, according to a study being released Wednesday by the Center for Housing Policy.

The surprising trend is being driven by a combination of factors: soaring housing costs that have overshot wage increases, higher health care bills and a rise in the number of single parents.

Minority working families have struggled the most. Their homeownership rate has stagnated at 45%, far below white families (71%) as of 2003, the last year for which figures are available.

The effects are being felt in communities where teachers, police and firefighters can’t afford to live in the communities where they work, if they want to own homes.

It seems like indicators like this should be part of the nightly news about how well the econmy is doing rather only measurements of corporate profits. Microsoft for instance might be raking in the profits, but that doesn’t mean the mainstream America is doing well. Despite the near holy worship of trickle down economics it obviously isn’t working for the people that do the real work in America.