Where Have the Jobs Gone?
The Washington Post has a sobering article discussing some of the latest economic numbers. Here’s a sample:
In 2002 and 2003, the economy has grown each quarter at annualized rates between 1.3 and 5 percent, but the number of payroll jobs has fallen an average of 0.4 percent every three months. Moreover, nationally, the number of hours worked per employee has remained steady, the Fed study said, pointing to “the emergence of a new kind of recovery, one driven by productivity increases rather than payroll gains.”
Basically, the economic “recovery” that we are in the midst of is a jobless one. There appear to be two sources for the stagnation in job creation. One is that increased worker productivity is allowing companies to produce more with the same workforce. Another is that jobs are being sent overseas.
Increased worker productivity is great, but so far the workers haven’t shared much of the wealth created by their production. Worker productivity in 2002 increased at the highest rate since the 1950s. In the last quarter worker productivity increased 6.8 percent. Yet, wages have increased less than 2 percent annually from 2001 to 2003.
As for sending jobs overseas, that’s supposed to be one of the early costs of globalization. But don’t anyone get worried about it because those jobs that are being sent overseas benefit us all in the long run. The stuff we buy at Wal-Mart is cheaper as result, and workers who lose their jobs will eventually find better ones in dynamic new industries.
That’s a nice story, but for now that’s all it is. In reality this exposes globalization for what it is: a race for the bottom.
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