
The Benefits of High-Tech Job Growth Don’t Trickle Down - gmck
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/technology-employment-multiplier-effect-inequality-research/595291/
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nostrademons
I wonder how the equation would change in the absence of zoning restrictions.

The way it's supposed to work is that when a new high-tech industry comes to
town, their highly-paid workers move in; there's a construction boom to
provide new housing for them; new restaurants, supermarkets, and other local
services go up to support the higher population; new workers are hired at
these establishments; there's a construction boom for them; and so on, until
the population equilibrates to account for the increased number of dollars
flowing into the region.

The way it actually works is that a new tech company moves in with its flood
of high-tech workers; all new construction is held up indefinitely in
permitting; the high-tech workers bid up rents and housing prices to what they
can afford, displacing all of the existing residents; teachers, waiters,
firemen, construction workers, etc. can no longer afford to live in the town
where they grew up; they move out; there's nobody to perform the essential
local service work; wages and prices get bid up because of the dearth of
supply and lots of excess demands; and basically all the value gets captured
by the owners of the company, landlords and homeowners who sell and move out.
The new tech workers become the old middle-class workers who were displaced;
the old middle-class workers face severe disruption in their lives; and
basically nobody is better off.

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xt00
It’s any interesting idea actually that would effectively mandate new jobs. In
the US forcing people to live in an area because of the job they get likely
wouldn’t fly. But you could mandate that the company must be located in a
particular area or that they get some tax incentives to be in a particular
area that needs improvement and thus lots of construction jobs are needed. To
some degree it might depress property values in an area though.

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40acres
This makes sense: a software company does not need to build a factory, has
less physical suppliers than a manufacturer, requires less office space, and
requires less people to produce equivalent value. Any trickle down effect that
software provides is insignificant to other efficiencies and gains.

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tlb
They're measuring jobs created in the same commuting area as high-tech jobs.
This seems like a poor metric: operations like Google put the high-tech jobs
in a few places and the low-tech jobs in other places. There's no reason to
co-locate them, so they can each be where the labor with the right skills is
available.

They don't specify whether gig jobs (like Uber drivers) are included. At any
rate, these are rarely colocated with the high-tech jobs so they wouldn't
count for much in their methodology anyway.

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xt00
I think there’s a vague hope that when there are a bunch of people who get
paid 200k in your city that it means there will be more people who get paid
50-100k... the reality is more like there is a big increase in the amount of
people who get paid like 20-50k.. people who do house cleaning, drive cars,
child care, work at restaurants, coffee shops, etc.. and to a lesser degree
some more teachers get raises and more teachers get hired.. people that get
paid a lot in a built up city aren’t going to be effectively paying out of
their salary more than a certain percentage of it to contractors and
luxuries.. if you get paid 200k per year you can likely only afford to spend
like 50k per year for things like buying a car or boat or upgrading your
house. So if you have 20k amazon employees it means maybe you have around
5-10k people who benefit from them tremendously, and maybe 30k who benefit
from them slightly.

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chovy
Nope. I have 25 years experience and just got an offer to interview at Apple
for $55/hour in the bay area. I made $75/hour back in 2001.

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raincom
Apple must be paying at least $100/hour to your staffing company.

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harsh3090416
The landlord of the apartment I live in, disagrees with this statement.

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abledon
is the actual study paywalled?

