POLITICAL NUMBERS: Jobs: Get 'Em Where They Ain't
Rappeport, Michael
POLITICAL NUMBERS: Jobs: Get ’Em Where They Ain’t by Michael Rappeport All indications are that some drastic changes in the American job market are being ignored by government policymakers...
...The goods-producing category encompasses mining, construction, manufacturing, communications, transportation, and utilities...
...By ignoring these trends, policymakers short-change several major groups in many important ways...
...The current tight budgets and job freezes, particularly at local levels, bring added barriers to the creation of more of these jobs...
...Other labor groups fare almost as badly...
...And the gap continues to widen in favor of the white collar...
...Creating more jobs is .an Administration priority, and yet, while all the numbers show a relative decline in manufacturing and goodsproducing jobs, the planners continue to act as if the nation’s economic future will be decided on the assembly lines...
...Their inattention is clearly reflected in the attitudes of the policymakers...
...Only ex-Governor Scranton has any direct experience with state or local government, which employs about one in six workers...
...In this government jobs has been about 400,000 with a heavy increase in teaching...
...Regardless of the figure uesd, it is highly unlikely that the goods-producing areas alone can provide the required number of jobs, let alone cut into the unemployment rate...
...In the short run, say by September, 1972, somewhere between 1.3 and 2.9 million non-agricultural jobs must be created just to keep respect, the average yearly gain in unemployment at its September, 197 1, rate of 6.0 per cent...
...Table I1 shows figures on the other side of the coin: the growth in the labor force...
...Barring a total reverse in past trends, the new jobs must come from the service side...
...As jobs become harder to find, many Americans become, or at least call themselves, self-employed...
...Every possible service job will be required...
...Twenty years ago, there were roughly an equal number of goods and service jobs...
...Perhaps it is because the economists themselves seldom direct their attentions away from the niceties of the money supply long enough to note the convulsions in the job market...
...The upper figure assumes another 300,000 drop in the military and no changes in participation rates or in the self-employed...
...The changes nonetheless don’t disappear...
...And while wholesale and retail trade employs one in five working Americans, not one of the 22 Board members has any connection with trade...
...Finally, there has been a 0.3 per cent decline in the labor force participation rate relative to established trends-meaning that about 520,000 people have simply not bothered to register themselves as actively seeking work and are thus not counted among the unemployed...
...Only twice, in the peak build-up years for Korea and Vietnam, have more than a million goods jobs been created in a year...
...While the goods-producing sectors take up less and less of the total economy, the government continues to hope to produce jobs by relying on investment tax credits and other incentives to production industries...
...The figures are five-year averages, smoothing out some of the more extreme year-to-year fluctuations, especially those involved with the build-ups for Korea and Vietnam...
...Taken together, the figures say some interesting things about both the short-run and long-run nature of unemployment...
...the opinions are solely the author’s...
...In the long run, the figures seem unequivocal...
...in its manpower training programs, spewing out thousands of people trained for jobs that may not exist...
...If anything like the upper figure applies, investment tax credits are only a beginning...
...POLITICAL NUMBERS: Jobs: Get ’Em Where They Ain’t by Michael Rappeport All indications are that some drastic changes in the American job market are being ignored by government policymakers who hope to revive the sagging economy and put people back to work...
...One might conclude, “Such is the price of not being organized,” but retail clerks, teachers, and a variety of other groups might disagree...
...Table I shows a breakdown of American payroll jobs by general industry category since World War 11...
...Today, there are 50 per cent more service jobs than goods jobs...
...Moreover, for the past year the civilian labor force has grown at a much faster rate than the total labor force as fewer young men are “employed” by the military...
...It is surprising that so few Americans seem to know much about these changes in the labor force...
...The low figure assumes no decrease in the military, another decrease of 0.3 per cent in the participation rate, and 750,000 additional “self-employed” workers...
...This sharp increase in the number of selfemployed (against long-term trends), appears to be a kind of hidden unemployment or perhaps underemployment...
...For instance, while three of five workers are in service industries, all five labor members of the Price and Wage Board represent goods-producing unions...
...This produces a kind of masked unemployment...
...Yet the government emphasizes assembly-line skills Michael Rappeport is Director of Statistical Services at Opinion Research Corporation in Princeton, N. J. This article uses ORC research...
...The last few years have seen marked growth in the services sector of the economy-with legions of new retail clerks, consultants, programmers and teachers...
...Three different service areas are shown: trade (wholesale and retail), services (including finance, real estate, and insurance), and government (local, state, and federal...
...As the postwar baby boom has come of age this figure has increased dramatically...
Vol. 3 • January 1972 • No. 11
