
Most US jobs created since 2005 are not conventional full-time work - cribbles
https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created-since-2005-are-temporary/
======
csours
> “We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the
> alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the
> rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.”

So, not exactly temp workers, but contract workers who require less overhead
and are easy to fire.

~~~
notsohugedeal22
Exactly why we need universal healthcare in the US

It’s something every worker should be fighting tooth and nail for

It would go a long way to breaking up the neoliberal corporate hegemony

Sadly, and regardless of education and political leanings, Americans seem in
love with a fictional account of the countries history. That it was all great
50 yrs ago without universal healthcare (when they were kids and not really
paying attention) so of course it’s just fine to keep it that way.

I encounter people of all ages and backgrounds with that notion kicking about,
every day. Having lived and traveled the world, Americans are unique in their
ignorance that the world was just as corrupt a generation ago.

Now let’s go watch some TVLand and chill

~~~
leggomylibro
We need more than universal healthcare; we need straight-up universal care.
The idea should be that periods of unemployment or uncertainty are not
terrifying gray areas for an average person. If people felt comfortable that
they would have support for finding better pastures from a shitty job, they'd
be more likely to seek them. If they felt more confident that they had
prospects after a layoff, they'd be more likely to look for alternate
employment instead of sitting around in an abandoned factory town as it rots
to the ground around them.

I think it comes down to the fact that risk-taking cannot be a luxury, if we
want the United States to remain a competitive and dynamic society. "Party of
jobs?" How about a party _for_ workers?

After all, as many conservatives will happily tell you, true value comes from
the heads, the hearts, and the hands of individuals. Why are we giving so much
free stuff to Big Jobernment?

~~~
theseus7
> How about a party for workers?

Possible principles for a workers party:

\- maximize after-rent and after-tax disposable income of workers

\- shift all taxes off of wages from labor and onto ground rent from private
enclosures of land and natural resources

\- support a universal public savings account for all citizen residents over
20

\- democratically divide and deposit all surplus natural resource rents
directly into the universal savings accounts

\- have the Federal Reserve conduct monetary policy by setting the interest
rate on the universal citizen savings accounts, rather than by buying up
assets from investors

This should increase the disposable income for a super-majority of workers by
decreasing rent, making acquiring a house more affordable, making land for new
small farms and businesses near competitive markets easier to obtain,
increasing private savings to ensure workers have access to a large-runway of
cash and high bargaining power while in between jobs, reducing the severity of
economic depressions and recessions created by idle land speculation, and by
directing capital flows away from mortgages and mortgage-backed assets and
into productive businesses which will actually increase the demand for labor
and raise wages.

~~~
ifhd
\- Seize the means of production

wait no, you aren't suggesting communism.

I don't think switching to a property tax system is the way to go. Wouldn't it
end up hurting people as you just see rents rise?

~~~
theseus7
I am advocating a land value tax, not a property tax. This is the most
progressive tax possible as the incidence of the tax does not fall upon labor
at all.

> Wouldn't it end up hurting people as you just see rents rise?

No, rents would not rise in proportion to the tax. Adding a tax as a carrying
cost on a good of fixed supply such as land produces the opposite effect of a
tax of goods and services. It increases the supply of available land and
decreases prices because the tax makes land less attractive as a speculative
investment and store of wealth. It encourages land holders to sell off any
underutilized land being held for speculative purposes, thus increasing the
supply of land available for actual use and improvement by workers, and
lowering its price.

The 'ground rent' collected by landholders is the surplus profit above what is
necessary to bring the land into use. If no one paid ground rent to private
landholders, the supply of land would still remain the same, and there would
still be just as much land available for everyone to use. Confiscating private
ground rent simply shifts this payment from private parties to the state, and
the tax cannot be passed on to renters through higher prices at all.

This increases the disposable income of a super-majority, because once all
private ground is instead paid to the government for the provision of
essential goods and services, all other taxes which fall upon the labor of
workers, such as payroll and consumption taxes, can be eliminated.

~~~
ifhd
So I buy some land. I plop an apartment building down on it. I pay "land tax"
on the land.

Why would I not just raise rents to preserve my profits?

~~~
theseus7
You will still be competing against everyone else who does the same, and your
competition will be vastly increased. It will no longer be profitable for
other nearby land holders to hold on to idle, vacant, or under-utilized land.
For instance, if someone is holding on to a vacant building, a parking lot, or
low density commercial development such as a strip mall, it may no longer be
profitable to hold on to these under a land value tax.

The vacant building may be replaced with several small town houses, the low
density commercial buildings may be replaced with multi-story mixed used
buildings with additional housing built-in, as property owners seek to
increase the value of their buildings relative to surrounding buildings in
order to acquire a profit larger than the land value tax. They would pay the
same tax regardless of whether they left the land vacant or put it to use, so
there is a strong incentive for them to put it to the best use possible.

When land is actually improved and put to use, this increases the demand for
labor and raises wages so that wages increase faster than rent. When land is
held idle for speculative purposes, rent increases faster than wages and the
average worker becomes poorer even if the output of the economy is increasing.
Nominal prices may change in reaction to market condition, but what is
important is wages relative to rent.

------
lkrubner
Another powerful demographic force in the USA is the number of men who are ex-
convicts:

""Few of us today are aware of the staggering size of this group. In a
forthcoming study, Sarah Shannon, a sociologist at the University of Georgia,
and five colleagues estimate that America’s criminal class (people with a
felony conviction or prison time in their background) roughly quadrupled
between 1980 and 2010 — from 5 million to nearly 20 million. Given the flow of
sentencing since then, we might expect that population to have topped 23
million by now. And since roughly two and a half million people are behind
bars today, this means that 20 million released felons and ex-prisoners are
living outside institutions. This implies that at least one in eight adult men
in the at-large population has been sentenced for a felony. And the ratio for
prime-age men could be even higher, given the upsurge of sentencing in recent
decades."

[http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2017/10/after-
incar...](http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2017/10/after-
incarceration-how-and-male-labor.html)

~~~
jstanley
> This implies that at least one in eight adult men in the at-large population
> has been sentenced for a felony.

That's an astounding statistic. I don't live in America, and I obviously don't
run into a perfectly uniform sampling of society, but I'd guess _way_ less
than 1 in 8 people I meet have done something that deserves being thrown in
prison.

~~~
gilrain
Not that many people have done something that deserves being thrown in prison
in the US, either. We're just far too happy to throw people in for things that
_don 't_ deserve it, like non-violent drug offenses.

~~~
gehwartzen
The other issue is that many companies juts have blanket bans against hiring a
'felon'; doesn't matter if it was murdering a family or stealing a TV

------
WalterBright
It's unsurprising considering the increasing costs and regulations imposed
upon full time workers.

When you see figures on what workers are paid, the figure should be "total
compensation", which includes things like benefits, FICA taxes paid on behalf
of the employee, etc. These can easily add 50% to the compensation. Showing
just the wage is disingenuous.

~~~
Aloha
Can you give some examples of what these costs are and how they've increased
since 2005 (or 1995)?

~~~
WalterBright
1\. Employer's FICA contribution

2\. Vacation paid time off

3\. Sick leave paid time off

4\. Maternity/Paternity paid time off

5\. health care benefits

6\. free/subsidized lunch

7\. free bus passes

8\. 401k employer matching contribution

9\. employee stock purchase plans

10\. stock options

11\. bonuses

12\. profit sharing / commissions

13\. retirement plan

14\. education tuition help

15\. random other things like gym memberships, legal help, etc.

Here's some of Boeing's benefits:

[http://www.boeing.com/careers/benefits/united-states-
benefit...](http://www.boeing.com/careers/benefits/united-states-
benefits.page)

Some statistics:

[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf)

[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm)

~~~
zzalpha
ROFL, wow, talk about cherry-picking to make a case...

The fact is the US offers the least PTO of any developed nation. Same goes
with sick leave and mat/pat leave.

And free lunch? Free bus passes? Stock and option plans, profit sharing,
educiation/tuition, retirement, gym memberships... HA!

I know this is shocking, but: most of the world isn't SV. Those benefits are
fantasies for the vast majority of American salaried employees.

Many people I know live with 2 weeks of combined PTO, 3 months of maternity
leave (mandated by law... ish... there's a bunch of exclusions) and no
paternity leave whatsoever, basic health care, and a 401k match if they're
lucky.

Now, I'm not claiming that a salaried employee isn't more expensive than a
contract employee. That's objectively true. And in a very real sense, the
entire point and why this trend is alarming: the more people pushed to
underemployement (part-time or contract work), the more people who don't
realize those additional benefits, thus contributing to the ongoing demolition
of the middle class.

But the US workplace is hideously behind the rest of the western world, and is
still managing to lead the way in underemployment as well. After a while you
really gotta wonder why that is...

~~~
WalterBright
> cherry-picking

The last two links are statistics.

> this isn't SV

You're right, Boeing is not part of Silicon Valley. Government & military
employees also, as a rule, get generous benefits.

But that's all beside the point, which is that the cost of those benefits
should be added in when comparing salaries.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
> which is that the cost of those benefits should be added in when comparing
> salaries.

If any of my past companies are any indication (outside of La La Land
California), most of the additional "benefits" are wiped out by my monthly
premium for my health insurance "benefit."

------
Mz
I actually consider this to be good news overall. We do need to keep an eye on
structuring things such that gig workers have the ability to grow real careers
and have positive experiences (wrt adequate income and quality of life in
terms of control over their time etc). We need to make sure these aren't
structured in a _fuck you_ way. But, I do gig work and it was a huge saving
grace while extremely ill and homeless. It allowed me to develop an income and
eventually get off the street.

~~~
dmix
Except that the go-to solution to every industry problems has been (and
continues to be) to regulate it centrally with some agency or shut it down
when that doesn't make sense, which in reality only works for a big-company
full time salary job oriented economy. Instead of strengthening property laws
and other personal liability protections, aka the type of recourses available
to contractors, and/or simply offering traditional services and protections to
everyone, not just full-time employee or those who meet a byzantine list of
special conditions.

Instead of trying to fix these out-of-date legacy systems, a legal and
regulatory system designed for a previous generation, everyone seems to want
to attack the 'gig economy' and Silicon Valley as some purposefully
exploitative entity, as if this is why Uber came into existence. Rather than a
natural evolution of the workplace in a high-tech economy.

My favourite are those pushing the idea that unions are the missing piece of
the puzzle in 2017.

~~~
alphonsegaston
Instead of understanding the history of labor force exploitation in the United
States, everyone wants to pretend that a high-tech gloss over a return to
Gilded Age-style Robber barons is a “natural evolution.” Tech workers survive
in comfort within the last remaining vestiges of benefits that union members
fought and died to obtain. The gig economy is just what they called
“piecework” a century ago.

~~~
dmix
You can make all of the correlations to historical trendlines you like but
this is a new phenomenon with plenty of benefits to both the customer and
workers compared to previous systems, which is why it exists, almost entirely
as a result of technology. It's been disruptive and sudden largely due to a
complete lack of innovation within existing systems, a possibly inherently
feature of previous models. _Not_ driven by some malicious intent of some
nerds in California, as the common narratives like to push. That doesn't mean
it's not flawed either, all new systems have growing pains.

But more importantly, ignoring how it fits into academic economic history,
it's not going away any time soon and we're not going back to an economy where
big companies + union model makes sense again merely because our
legal/regulatory system was previously designed for that.

They say the political right is the one obsessed with pining for the old days
in the US but I see it just as much nostalgia coming from the left. And it
does little to help people solve the problems they have today and, likely more
so, in the future.

~~~
alphonsegaston
The intentions of “nerds” are entirely irrelevant if the outcome is widespread
economic tenuousness.

Sweeping aside history because you’re arriving at the same kind of poverty by
novel means is quite the hand wave. No one disagrees that how we address these
problems is going to be different from times past, but to pretend that things
like class relations are ahistorical defies any notion of reasoned
consideration. And especially in an age of such extreme income inequality that
the greatest predictor of one’s future wealth is that of their parents.

~~~
dmix
> The intentions of “nerds” are entirely irrelevant if the outcome is
> widespread economic tenuousness.

Not if we're talking about history and that's very much the history being
written in popular culture.

You specifically said that it's not a "natural evolution" because a similar
thing happened in the past during the gilded age. And instead it's some sort
of regression back to that?

My entire comment counters that sentiment. The context and motivations are
very different this time around, even if some (keyword is some) of the
outcomes are similar. And when context and motivation are different then the
effective solutions are going to also be very different.

> but to pretend that things like class relations are ahistorical

The typical academic writing where "class relations" are the central worldview
tends to push more and more economic control to centralization and socialist
ideology.

If I missed an evolution in the solutions offered there (ie, deprioritizing
property and tort law in favour of more unions, centralization, agency
oversight, laws that only apply to full-time employee, etc), then I'll happily
admit I'm wrong to dismiss it as more of the same...

So either you want to cripple the modern industrial evolution, ala Uber in
London, to go back to the previous model or your think those same systems will
somehow work in the new era. All I'm saying is the previous generations
solutions are a poor fix for this problem. And buying into 'working class vs
everyone else' worldview and the socialist breadbasket that comes with that,
rather than strengthening the individual's ability to not be exploited within
the context of a decentralized capitalist system through stronger courts
protecting contractors and modernized government services, is a misguided and
nostalgic proposition.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
_This is in large part because the sectors that saw the largest move towards
alternative work arrangements—like education and medicine—have a high
proportion of women._

Anyone know more about this? What jobs in those areas are becoming contract
based?

~~~
csours
My little sister is a physical therapist assistant (usually the person
actually administering physical therapy), and a lot of her jobs have been
contract based.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Ah, I didn't realize those jobs were starting to turn!

------
adventured
In the time since the end of the article's data was sourced, until now, the U6
rate has fallen from 11% to 8.3% - which is back to where it was in the Summer
of 1998. When it gets into the 7.x% levels, the employment market will be the
second hottest in roughly 50 years next to the year 2000.

The time frame sourced, includes an U6 rate that reached nearly 18% and a U3
rate that hit 10%. It's not surprising that conventional full-time work
numbers would be severely distorted both by the great recession and the
recovery period.

The actual labor force reality is the US is facing a severe shortage of labor
due to extremely slow population growth (and that assumes a big hit from
inbound automation; if that's not as big as forecast, the shortage will be
that much worse).

The US added $4.x trillion to its economy in the last ten years (despite the
great recession), roughly the size of Germany's economy of 82 million people.
It accomplished that while adding only 22 million people. Without a leap in
automation, ie productivity gains, there's no way to keep matching that
economic expansion in the next 10 and 20 years as population growth slows even
further.

~~~
1_2__4
If there is a labor shortage then why are the jobs being created of the kind
that are less advantageous to workers? Isn’t the market supposed to “correct”
in favor of labor in that scenario? Because it looks like the opposite has
happened.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Isn’t the market supposed to “correct” in favor of labor in that scenario?

The purpose of neoliberalism is to ensure that no matter the actual ratio of
supply to demand, the price of labor will never rise. _Must_ never rise. The
basis of this entire economy is low wages.

------
alkonaut
You'd think that where workers are easy to fire such as in the US, there would
be _less_ incentive to use contractors over employees, than in places with
very rigid rules for firing.

~~~
munificent
Full-time employees have to be provided healthcare and benefits. Contractors
do not.

~~~
alkonaut
That sure weighs in the other direction. But presumably no contractor or other
non-employee would (should) work for _less_ cost to the employer since they
still have to fund pensions, healthcare etc?

I'm guessing that the situation is that in some sectors there are people now
working as "contractors" for the same type of money they would be making as
employees - but without benefits.

So it's a good thing at least that all this translates to fantastic growth
which ultimately trickles down... /s

------
ryanmarsh
This report from GAO[1] published in 2015, referenced in the report,
referenced in TFA (whew), is very eye opening and worth a read.

It states very clearly how the economy is changing. Public policy will need to
adapt to this new environment. Also, this is just the beginning of a massive
shift in work that was predicted as far back as the Regan administration.

1:
[http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-168R](http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-168R)

------
jsloss
Published Dec 2016 ...

~~~
notfromhere
That's very recent for economic stats

~~~
jsloss
Ah, right. Good point.

