
Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017) - azemda
http://evonomics.com/less-work-job-creation-peter-gray/
======
neilwilson
The problem is fairly simple. The actual output of society is produced by a
relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily
replicable (ie fungibility is largely a myth).

We need those people to work a full week operating the machines that actually
make all the output we all consume.

But why should they do that if nobody else is working? They could just make
enough for the small set of people that are actually required to make enough
stuff and stop work on Tuesday - having the rest of the week off.

So we all give up full weeks of our finite lives in solidarity with those who
we need to give up full weeks of their finite lives if we're actually going to
get the goods and services we need to live. And that's because we're a species
that tallies our debts with each other - the reciprocity principle
([https://www.en.uni-
muenchen.de/news/newsarchiv/2016/paulus_s...](https://www.en.uni-
muenchen.de/news/newsarchiv/2016/paulus_socialcapital.html))

Or to put it in other words, sharing out the needed work is rather more
difficult in practice than it is in theory where fungibility is largely
assumed. And the more advanced our technology, the harder the sharing becomes
and the more difficult it is to maintain the illusion of sufficient
reciprocity.

~~~
jandrewrogers
To rephrase:

Surpluses and shortages of skilled labor are very unevenly distributed.
Differences in ease of automation will magnify this. If there is a demand for
100 neurosurgeons and then cut everyone's hours by 20%, you effectively
created a shortage of 25 neurosurgeons. Decreasing hours doesn't increase
supply and supply of highly skilled labor is not fungible i.e. you can't
trivially retrain a PhD in electrical engineering or truck driver to become a
neurosurgeon.

This leads to the following conundrum:

If we forcibly cut hours for everyone across the board then it will create
severe supply shortages for the most highly skilled labor that is most
difficult to automate, some of which already have severe shortages because it
is so difficult to create supply. If we cut hours such that labor supply is
proportional to demand then the most highly skilled labor that is most
difficult to automate will be required to work by far the most hours, which
isn't fair to highly skilled labor and creates a disincentive for required
labor.

Systematically reducing working hours may benefit the majority but it creates
perverse social and economic dynamics for the highly skilled minority whose
labor society can't easily replace.

~~~
Retric
We already forcibly cut doctors hours by giving them inefficient education and
excessive paperwork. A doctor working 3 days a week in an efficient system
could spend more time with patients in a lifetime than the average US doctor
does.

The US labor market only really has shortages by design.

~~~
jandrewrogers
I agree that _some_ labor shortages are the product of artificial restriction.
But I strongly disagree that _all_ labor shortages in the US have this
property. Some labor shortages are unambiguously intrinsic and very difficult
to eliminate. Sometimes there simply aren't enough people with deep expertise
necessarily acquired over several years to meet demand.

Take my specialty for example. I mostly work on operational multi-modal
spatial and sensor analytics at extremely large scales and high velocities (as
is typical for these data models). Right now, half the Fortune 500 are trying
to hire people that know how to design these systems and throwing silly money
at anyone that seems like they can. There is no open source software that can
do it and half the required computer science is not in literature, it is an
extremely deep technical specialty that takes years of experience to learn.
There are, maybe, a half-dozen people in the world right now that know how to
design these systems end-to-end from first principles and likely a demand for
several hundred. There is no way to manufacture that supply on a time horizon
that matters to anyone that wants to hire them.

Even one level lower, high-end systems engineering talent demand is _at least_
an order of magnitude higher than the actual supply. This requires very deep
experience to be competent that you can't learn in bootcamp or six months of
on-the-job training. Yet despite being paid extremely well even by software
engineering standards, as an industry we don't come remotely close to
producing enough of them. In fairness, it takes serious devotion to craft and
no small amount of talent to become high-end systems engineer -- but few
people with the raw talent have that ambition or interest, even though it pays
extremely well. You can't force people to do what they have no interest in
doing.

~~~
Retric
6 months may not be enough to train up someone without a technical background,
but when a skill shortage extends beyond the time horizon of training a pool
of 100’s of thousands of people up it’s very much self inflicted as the
company simply does not want to pay market rate + training.

PS: People with related skills can always pick up these deep specialty skills
with extreme speeds. I have seen someone paid contractor rates to learn a
extreme specialty. Including that training, he actually finished the project
in less time than the original team had wasted.

~~~
jandrewrogers
There are many deep specialties that _no one_ picks up with "extreme speed" no
matter how technical they are, certainly not to the level required by
companies that want to hire these skills. Think database kernel engineering or
non-trivial parallel systems design. Acquiring these skills happens almost
exclusively by apprenticing for years with real experts. In six months you
could go from no skills to mediocre skills with a lot of training, but no one
wants "mediocre" working on their database kernel for good reason.

It would be like me assuming that I, a broadly competent technical expert,
could quickly and easily develop a deep expertise in e.g. high-performance
graphics engines. A diagnosis of Dunning-Kruger would not be incorrect were I
to make such an assertion.

~~~
Retric
This is not a new problem.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_the_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_the_Arts)

Look into it’s history and Walt Disney has been training animators for
decades. It’s a deep skill that is takes significant time to master, so you
need an actual pipeline.

Continuing the idea, NASA trains astronauts. They don’t need very many world
wide, but they need a few and the only way to get them is to train these
people.

I could go on, but outside of a months to few years for absolutely new fields
shortages are by design.

------
cryptica
If market competition wasn't so aggressive, we could start to focus more on
value creation. Right now the economy is all about capturing existing value,
monopolizing markets to keep competitors out and using targeted advertising to
divert people's attention away from real value. Journalism is in such bad
shape that if an independent scientist invented a cure for cancer, most people
probably wouldn't hear about it and that scientist would end up homeless. If
there is no big money behind something, nobody cares!

Try starting an open source project these days; your chance of getting any
traction is close to zero. Influencers are unlikely to help you to spread
awareness of your project unless there is something in it for them
financially; they're more likely to help promote an enterprise competitor who
will pay them.

Journalism is dead, now everything we believe in is decided by so-called
'influencers' but these are typically the most shallow, superficial, scheming,
manipulative individuals that have ever walked the face of the earth. These
people wouldn't know how to tell the difference between real value and a
steaming pile of shit. Most influencers are just idiots with rich friends.

Capital has replaced our values. We need to bring back real values like
honesty, integrity, humility, experience, pursuit of knowledge, empathy,
efficiency...

~~~
badpun
> Try starting an open source project these days; your chance of getting any
> traction is close to zero. Influencers are unlikely to help you to spread
> awareness of your project unless there is something in it for them
> financially; they're more likely to help promote an enterprise competitor
> who will pay them.

This is interesting. You're saying you would be giving away something
valueable for free, and yet there would be no takers? Maybe it's not so
valueable after all then? Stuff that is genuinely solving some yet unsolved
pain or problem should, given time, take on its own, without influencers.

~~~
cryptica
>> Stuff that is genuinely helpful and valueable and unique should, given
time, take on its own, without influencers.

This is completely false. It depends entirely on your social network.

My main OSS project has over 5K stars on GitHub; it's used by thousands of
companies and has been growing steadily but I'm certain that if it hadn't been
on the front page of HN 5 years ago, nobody would be using it today. These
days it accumulates more GitHub stars every day and I don't do any marketing
at all. GitHub stars compound like dollars in a bank account. It got to this
point because of HN. Being a useful product was just the prerequisite. There
are plenty of potentially very useful products which no one will ever use
because people are poorly informed.

Some niche projects are obviously useful, but there is a significant category
of projects which are highly valuable but whose value is not immediately
obvious; in these cases it can take years to build momentum and you NEED
influencers to help you to get that once in a lifetime chance to make even a
small impact in your industry.

Also, the opposite is true; there are projects that seem valuable at a glance
and which can get a lot of attention (if promoted by the right influencers)
but they are an anti-pattern and they provide negative value in the medium and
long term.

I've seen many great projects go nowhere and I've seen really terrible
projects become exceedingly popular.

The masses are not rational at all; most decisions are based on shared
delusions. How many times in human history have huge amounts of people
believed things that were proven to be completely false. Too many to count.
There are many things that we believe today which will someday be proven to be
false. Humanity has not gotten smarter over the past few decades, if anything,
we've become complacent and as a result we've developed tunnel vision and have
become dumber.

~~~
ellius
In other words, marketing is very important. I think as technical people we
like to "evaluate things on merit," but the reality is that the technological
complexity of our society has become such that it is virtually impossible for
someone to gauge the quality of a product in a field where we're not an
expert. That's part of why marketing takes on such importance.

~~~
cryptica
Yes it is. It's just extremely frustrating that even though people are aware
of how powerful marketing is, that no one seems to acknowledge its effects on
themselves and on society. Marketing doesn't create value, it redistributes
existing value by creating an illusion of added value. The reality is that it
takes value from a large number of small players and gives it to a few large
players; and this has nothing to do with the true underlying value of the
products.

------
handedness
“The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose of
his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce
between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so
difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the
incentive to industry. We think too much of production, and too little of
consumption. One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment
and simple happiness, and that we do not judge production by the pleasure that
it gives to the consumer.”

\--Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness (1932)

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

~~~
vivekd
I disagree. I think it largely depends on the work you do. If you are doing
something you dont enjoy.or don't find meaningful, the work is just a means to
an end. But for many people a job is something they derrive meaning from, many
craftspeople have notions of pride in their work. I think probably the best
example is people who work with the mentally handocapped, studies reveal they
tend to be the happiest and most fulfilled, likely because they are getting
that sense of fulfillment from their work.

I think the author is wrong about our work culture impaacting peoples need for
work. I think people actually want to feel like they are contributing to
society, like they are useful. The question to me isnt how do we create less
work, its how do we make work more meaningful for people

~~~
Viliam1234
I don't need a job to give my life meaning. Thanks, but I already have
friends, family, hobbies, etc. It's the need to have a job to pay my bills,
that reduces the time I can actually spend with my friends, family, hobbies,
etc.

So, the current system gives meaning to some, and takes meaning from some. I'd
have to see some math first, in order to believe it is actually a net benefit
on average.

> many craftspeople have notions of pride in their work

Yeah, the job keeps me advancing at my craft; I think alone I would be doing
similar things anyway, but probably more slowly. At the same time, the job
often forces me to cut corners; alone I would prefer to do things properly,
rather than hurry up towards a bullshit deadline only to fix things later when
they start falling apart. Again, the pride is both given and taken.

> I think people actually want to feel like they are contributing to society,
> like they are useful.

But that's quite different from having a job. With more free time, I could
contribute to society in ways that are not predictably profitable (which is
why I am not doing as a source of income now), but would probably have more
meaning that what I am doing now.

> how do we make work more meaningful for people

If you make it voluntary, at least the smart people will have freedom to
optimize it towards more meaning. Maybe stupid people will need more guidance.
If so, let there be some provided, but again, make it a bit more voluntary
than "obey or starve".

------
cleandreams
I live in SF and I have been in and out of the tech industry, so I know the
city from both perspectives. (I now work at one of the big tech companies.) So
many people outside of the industry work more than one job. They need to.
Wages are too low. That is the problem, wages. Focus on that, economists, so
ordinary people can get by on one job's wages.

~~~
dvtrn
Wish there were more comments about this. Like you, I too worked in an
industry that wasn’t technology (home repair services, carpenters,
electricians and plumbers), and saw it for what it was.

It’s atrocious what some of these people are asked to do and the wages they’re
expected to perform at.

But beyond that, even wages aren’t even the entire picture. I live in Chicago.
I managed a fleet of workers who not only had to content with a company that
paid laughable wages, workers were on their own for parking, vehicle
maintenance, equipment and materials, ancillary costs of maintaining their
tools.

End of the day the $25 we paid to our _licensed and insured_ electrician
translated to $12/hr coming home.

I fought for a year to get those fellas better pay. Our managing company was
hearing none of it. The guy who ran the entire operation took home six
figures. I know this because I saw the books.

~~~
totablebanjo
Labor’s been screwed the last 50 years. What kind of six figures are we
talking, mid?

~~~
dvtrn
_What kind of six figures are we talking, mid?_

The kind that go into his bank account? Is there another kind I'm unaware of
presently-I'm unsure how to answer your question here?

~~~
hardwaresofton
I think the commenter was trying to ascertain _just how deep_ the implied
inequality was -- if the guy who ran the entire operation is barely clearing
$100,000, then as far as I understand, in the context of San Francisco the
owner is struggling as well -- that says something else about the economic
situation of the company.

------
ameliaquining
Are economists obsessed with job creation? Government economists tend to focus
on it because that's literally their job, but my sense of academic economists
has always been that they're pretty good at not eliding distinctions like
between employment and economic value.

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
100% employment is possible. Just look at any U.S. military base. Without
poverty, capitalists lose some of the leverage over the working class which
makes the current levels of exploitation difficult to maintain without massive
price hikes. I think the U.K. had an experience with mass employment that
convinced capitalists to raise the prices of their goods just to maintain the
exploitation which poverty allowed.

~~~
atemerev
Sure, we once had an entire country with 300 million population, living like
on a military base: barracks as residences, the same assortment available in
department stores, symbolic salaries, some involuntary labor, and no freedom
of movement. It was the USSR.

Not everyone liked this lifestyle. At least the personnel on military bases
know when their contract ends, so they could return to life of freedom and
opportunity.

------
astazangasta
Neat! Gray is the person who first pointed me towards anarchism (back in 1999,
wow) as a political philosophy, after reading about his Sudbury Valley School
and following a link to the Anarchist FAQ.

[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-
ed...](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-
collective-an-anarchist-faq)

------
nerder92
"Band hunter-gatherers, who, as I said, lived a life of play, are famous among
anthropologists for their eagerness to share and help one another"

I can find a lot of similarities with the IT industry, or at least in the
early days. This is what other industries misses a lot.

"Work less. Play more" I totally buy this slogan, our life is about us and our
loved ones at the end.

------
Can_Not
They're also under concerned about useless and wasteful jobs.

------
TomMckenny
In principle from a capital stand point, it is always better to have one
unemployed person and one over worked person who is terrified of becoming
unemployed than two employed people. So reducing workload to increase
employment rates is completely unacceptable to those who own society.

Wage presure from near full employment is also undesireable to them but must
be considered the lesser of two evils and is fairly fudge-able by changing the
definition of employed.

~~~
dahfizz
That's a pretty big claim you're making with nothing to back it up.

Do you think it's the "terror" that makes that situation prefferable from a
"capital stand point"? In times of historically low unemployment, I hardly
think the general populace is holding such terror. And even so, why would
splitting the work reduce this terror?

~~~
TomMckenny
>That's a pretty big claim you're making with nothing to back it up.

It includes the following assumptions:

Low unemployment causes upward wage pressure.

Organizations are aware of this.

Organizations cooperate politically to achieve their goals.

>In times of historically low unemployment, I hardly think the general
populace is holding such terror.

Exactly. Lower unemployment increases confidence. (and reduced hours would
lower unemployment)

Higher up in this thread is a suggestion that: 1) almost all productivity
comes from a few workers and 2) it is impossible to reduce their work load and
3) employers retain low productivity workers for long hours to encourage them.
All of these assumptions are highly dubious but the theory is popular because
it appeals to comforting, entrenched ideas. Which is why no one notices that
is a big claim with nothing backing it up.

------
AtlasBarfed
There already was great efficiency growth that would have enabled "less work".

It was all taken by the ruling "elite".

------
_vk_
Economists aren't "obsessed with job creation". _Politicians_ are.

~~~
jvm
…and they are obsessed because _voters_ are.

------
bantersaurus
Time for a period of degrowth, the only way we are going to deal with
depleting natural resources and global warming.

------
topkai22
Less work is harder then it sounds because (in advanced economies) MOST jobs
are skilled jobs, even the ones that don't seem that way, and developing skill
takes time, skill, and practice. As others have noted, labor isn't nearly
fungible as we often pretend, and two workers doing 20 hour schedules
generally aren't as productive as one worker doing a 40 schedule. This shows
up in the "part time penalty" for workers amongst other things, but should
resonate with anyone who's had to onboard others to a team or project.

There is also obviously a point where more effort out of individual workers is
counter productive (see Ford and the 40h work week), but it seems 32-40h weeks
may be near optimum generally.

------
ptah
for many, it is a huge ideological taboo to even consider distributing
resources outside current investment/wage model

------
40acres
Outside of a autocratic, centralized economy I would wager that it's natural
for an economy to "find new work" for labor. The fact that we have increased
automation does not mean that the labor force should shrink along with it, it
should mean that over generations people do new things. An office supply
company in the 70s would bet big on fax machines, with the ubiquity of email a
comparable company today might focus on ergonomic office supplies.

------
rini17
Theoretically it's fine, why not. In practice, who would opt to coordinate
twice as big group of people with halved worktime?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Why don’t we have half as many people working 80 hours then?

~~~
barry-cotter
Because employers aren’t generally willing to pay the premium necessary to get
workers to do that. In some fields they are and the workers do, e.g. law,
investment banking, medicine.

------
chewz
Worth reading on Keynes famous prediction that productivity gains will result
in 15 hours workweek.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/inequal...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/inequality-
work-hours/422775/)

------
mruts
I dunno, I like working. I don't think I would want to go on an extended
period without working hard. In fact, retiring early increases mortality[1].

[1][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/627711](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/627711)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Surveys indicate you’re in the minority. Most people don’t enjoy their job, or
want to work less.

We’re long overdue to move past “maximizing employment” at an economic policy
level (looking at you US Federal Reserve).

~~~
topkai22
I don't think you are right about people not enjoying their work, in the US
context at least. The vast majority of workers seem to have pretty high job
satisfaction. In fact, a quick search shows concern when average nationwide
job satisfaction drops below the mid 80%s, which seems phenomenal.
([https://news.gallup.com/poll/147833/Job-Satisfaction-
Struggl...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/147833/Job-Satisfaction-Struggles-
Recover-2008-Levels.aspx))

As for wanting to work less, that's probably true, but I'll bet you could get
that result for almost any question involving extensive time commitment- for
example, I love my kids dearly and love spending time with them, but if
grandma offers to watch them I'll take her up in a hot second.

------
pjdemers
Economists are obsessed with job creation because the leading ones started
their careers in the late 70s and early 80s when the number of jobs was
shrinking, but the number of people who wanted a job was growing faster than
ever.

~~~
embersbreaking
"70s and early 80s when the number of jobs was shrinking"

That's very interesting. Got any cites for that? Would like to explore. Thx.

------
rmdashrfstar
...or how about let's just create more jobs?

