
Job polarisation and the decline of middle-class workers’ wages - ghosh
http://www.voxeu.org/article/job-polarisation-and-decline-middle-class-workers-wages
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ChuckMcM
I can't really get my head around the fundamental premise in this research,
which is that 'skill difficulty' is some sort of baked in thing. Many four
year college graduates today have more mathematics than a professor of
mathematics had 100 years ago. Did the 'math skill' go from 'high skill' to
'middle skill'?

Most of the things I've read is that people have the 'wrong' skills, so if you
have the 'correct' skills you are in a minority, sought after and can demand
higher wages, if you have the 'wrong' skills you are competing with everyone
else for anything available, which runs the gamut from 'no skills' to 'easily
acquired quickly' skills.

An interesting question for me is how people change their skill sets over
time. I am familiar with engineers who 'stopped learning' and when the
industry had moved past the technologies they were skilled in, they became
unemployed and stayed that way until they developed new skills. And in that
vein it would be interesting to know what is the rate of change in demanded
skills vs their time to acquire. We take kids out of high school and turn them
into software engineers with fours years of engineering curriculum (which
could easily be done in 2 years if you skipped all the general Ed classes. 128
units of which 64 are in your major? Seems like a testable hypothesis.) There
are jobs where you need a Ph.D (or MD, or JD) so that skill set is takes a bit
more than 2 years to acquire (6 - 8 depending).

I don't see skills as this thing you get between the ages of 18 and 22 and the
forever and ever after you either use them or die. So I can't really agree
with the premise that 'middle skill' job loss means anything.

~~~
NTDF9
As much as I am happy that my profession pays well, it is unreasonable to
think everyone has the ability to do what we do. Adapting to skills beyond
your domain is really hard, especially when you are aging.

Here's a scenario. Let's say that US loses it's energy supply (due to any
fictional reason you can imagine). Who do you think is going to be in demand?
No, no no kids...it's not going to be us programmers. The demand will be for
the physically abled. The guys who can lift and ship without breaking too much
sweat.

Different environment, different demands. We are just plain lucky to be in the
workforce today and to have an interest (and aptitude) in tech stuff.

For society to function, everyone needs to have a reasonable chance at having
the ability to live.

~~~
ChuckMcM

       > Different environment, different demands. We are just 
       > plain lucky to be in the workforce today and to have an 
       > interest (and aptitude) in tech stuff.
    

I think you just made my point, did you see it that way? The definition of
"high skill" and "low skill" are dependent variables on the environment, not
independent variables like this research treats them.

I also find this bit: _" Adapting to skills beyond your domain is really hard,
especially when you are aging."_ really interesting. It's the difference
between "hard" and "possible." I get that its hard to go back into learning
mode, especially to recapture that ability to treat every new thing as a gem
to be admired. But I have not found any evidence that it isn't possible. And
being hard is not in and of itself a reason not to do something. Especially if
doing this 'hard' thing can greatly enhance your ability to be productive in
the new environment.

In your fictional scenario, I would totally start working on blacksmithing.
They seemed to be the 'hackers' of their day. And I'd expect it to take
several years before anyone would seriously considering using my services for
anything other than basic stuff. Hard? Yes, but unless I had some damage to my
rotator cuff or something I would think it was possible.

~~~
NTDF9
> Yes, but unless I had some damage to my rotator cuff or something I would
> think it was possible.

It would be naive of us to think that we will 'surely" adapt to new skills.
Circumstances can mean that you just don't have the ability to do such things
anymore.

Is it "possible"? sure. But is it going to suck the life out of you? Most
likely. Upgrading skills takes time, effort and resources. Most people (even
in America) don't have enough of each of those.

Look at all these students with $200k debt. They've basically imprisoned
themselves for a long time. Even a job that pays $100k (-35% tax -30% living
expenses) does not cut it. Acquiring new skills with negative equity makes it
harder for most people.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Just a couple of follow-ups. I see your points but history doesn't agree.
People adapt or die, and sometimes adapt and die. Looking at it in the 'small'
(which is on an individual anecdote level) vs looking at it in the 'large'
which is on a population cohort level. When there are large industrial changes
there are employment shifts. That displaces some workers, creates new
opportunities which are filled by new workers. After one or two generations of
stability the process flattens out.

    
    
       > Look at all these students with $200k debt.
    

This gets thrown around a lot. But it is a red herring. You need to drill down
to find students who paid $200K for a worthless education, yes there are some,
are they a material subset of all students? No. Look at all the people who
were put into mortgages they couldn't afford because the rules were changed to
incentivize that. That about pulled down the global financial system (we're
still not quite done with that mistake). There is certainly a social justice
issue with student debt, providing loans to students to get degrees that are
unmarketable. But the 'fix' is to get rid of the debt discharge protection
that student loans currently have. Allow the students to declare bankruptcy
and dump the obligation, and guess what nobody will loan students $200K to get
a fine arts degree. Is that a problem ? I don't know. For schools? Yes, they
are already figuring out that they can't sell a diploma for an arbitrary price
any more.

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ItendToDisagree
I'm baffled that Managerial work is lumped into High-Skill jobs...

Easily 80% of managers I've met/worked for have been decidedly low skill.
Especially when compared with engineers, research scientists, programmers,
designers, etc

~~~
Loughla
I like making up statistics, too. 50% of the engineers I've met don't really
do enough to earn their salary. How's that one?

Good management requires a vast amount of skill, whether that's technical or
soft skills. Good managers keep you doing your work, and reduce your
distractions without you even noticing.

Your statement should read, "Easily 80% of the managers I've met/worked for
have been BAD". See the difference?

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Is it 'making up statistics' when you give an opinion based on your own
personal anecdotal evidence and say as much in the sentence? I understand your
attempt to be provocative with your comment, but I don't see even what you
said as making up a statistic, unless of course it is untrue in your
experience and you literally just made it up.

Fair enough on the rewording but I'd hardly call management high-skill labor
akin to the examples I mentioned.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
I don't know. Managing takes as much skill as anything I have done in my
career, but there is no good way of learning it than on the job IMHO. Not
saying all managers are well skilled, but saying it is a low skill job is to
me grossly misleading.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Fair enough, I could see that. I was mostly thinking of it in terms of learned
skills, rather than human relations/leadership/politics skills, which I've
always felt are more of a thing that people have, or do not have.

I probably shouldn't say its a low-skill or brainless job (in general...
though I do often get that feeling from mangers), but I just personally never
put it in the class of highly-skilled jobs.

Edit: I guess that I've always just placed it as more of a 'ladder climber'
type of job than a highly skilled worker type of job. But to be totally fair
that is likely due to my experiences. :)

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Yeah, bad managers who mainly play the politics or think that management is
what it is all about where the reasons I begun with starting startups. Now I
don't have to work for them. :)

------
guylhem
Additional question : why should we care about income inequality?

The post WW2 area had less income inequality because the world economy had
been torn apart.

We are now just going back to pre WW1 rates - ie basically reaching the point
where we were before 2 world wars destroyed so much wealth.

~~~
mkr-hn
WW2 happened because an angry failed artist convinced some people that
inequality should be solved by force.

~~~
MrZongle2
In part, yes.

But that angry failed artist came to power by blaming the disastrous economic
conditions on a) the victorious powers of WWI for imposing crippling penalties
upon Germany, b) the existing government and their predecessors for accepting
and adhering to these conditions, and c) certain groups within Germany for
"exploiting" the situation.

------
spikels
Ah so "What we know about income inequaliy(sic)" is "routinisation" is to
blame.

This is yet another sloppy, cut and paste job by Reuters of a single
researcher's blog post based on his unpublished working paper. Not worth
reading unless you have already read most of the academic research on the
subject.

~~~
asgard1024
So what do you recommend we should read?

~~~
spikels
Assuming you have a basic education in economics and statistics I would dive
into the academic research. Just keep in mind that like everyone else,
academics have biases of various kinds (e.g. Thomas Piketty is pretty far
left) and inequality is a very controversial and political issue. It is best
to look to the data and get multiple interpretations. Unfortunately you can't
rely on reporters who are even less informed and just as biased.

Lastly keep in mind nobody may know the answer to these important questions as
the system is very complex and dynamic and the data we have is not very good.

Here's a variety of links to get started but you should dig into the
references:

[http://economics-exposed.com/how-arec/](http://economics-exposed.com/how-
arec/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality)

[http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/](http://www.equality-of-
opportunity.org/)

[http://ntj.tax.org/wwtax/ntjrec.nsf/009a9a91c225e83d852567ed...](http://ntj.tax.org/wwtax/ntjrec.nsf/009a9a91c225e83d852567ed006212d8/30212f14664082b1852579b5006904e1/$FILE/A01_Larrimore.pdf)

------
lutusp
I was planning to chastise the poster for not simply copying the original
article's title and therefore misspelling "inequality", but then I followed
the link and discovered that Reuters spelled it wrong too. What's the world
coming to when professional journalists can't spell common words?

~~~
TrainedMonkey
I like to call it morning.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Being an editor for Reuters must be tough... Working spell check and all. :D

~~~
spikels
Reuters fired some their editorial staff just last fall and there have been
many similar layoffs in the past.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/business/media/reuters-
pla...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/business/media/reuters-plans-to-lay-
off-newsroom-staff.html?_r=0)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Apparently Editor is a 'middle skill' job :-)

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VladRussian2
>First, the number of well-paid middle-skill jobs in manufacturing and
clerical occupations has decreased substantially since the mid-1980s.

in all these articles/analysis replace the middle-skill jobs in manufacturing
with the programming/IT jobs - the middle-skill jobs of today - and you'd
hardly find any decline

