It’s extremely misleading to not factor in market share in this type of analysis.
Sure, there may be 400 airlines, but 10 make up 90% of the market. The notion that the other 390 make a material difference in the labor market for that industry is asinine.
> The notion that the other 390 make a material difference in the labor market
If there were the ability to do vastly differently in the labor market, it matters not how small one is - the better solution will over time grow and become the new standard.
On the other hand, if there are actual real worl constraints outside the industry that all players in an industry face, then they will have similar prices, wages, actions, and outcomes.
So if you really want to argue that somehow the biggest players decide the wages for every other player and these wages are not constrained except for the whim of billionaire cabals, then make that argument. Because that is not what happens when there are so many players.
Or, if you really want to check facts, the largest airline in the US has around 20% market share, and it falls quickly after that. So there's nearly zero chance that there's lack of competition - every company after that one are all still fighting to increase market share, by offering they ever they can, including trying to attract the best workers.
What's misleading is trying to lump actual competitors as one monolithic whole and claim there's no competition. The fact is there are many, many companies where one could work. That there are 10 to reach 90% is likely better than in any other country - it is in the few I just checked. Care to show countries where there is more competition? How many airlines do you think employees need to have a competitive market? One each?
5 of those 10 biggest airlines were started in my lifetime, and surely several were started in yours. The only asinine notion is claiming that small companies have no material differences in the labor market over the medium term, since in this industry (and pretty much every other) those small companies are constantly redefining the industry, many becoming the biggest players in less time than an employee's career.
Thinking in static snapshot terms without understanding history or trajectories will always fail your analysis.
The discussion was about the labor market, and what choices you have to get a different job should your employer be a predatory one.
First you claimed that the fact that there is a long tail of enterprises in many sectors, that somehow translates to more choices within the labor market, even though as we know, the vast majority of job actually lie within a handful of firms.
Now, you are making the point that startups can enter the market. This is a red herring. Pilots can’t just start up an entire airline in order to get a new job.
No, I'm not making the circular argument of merging all the places one can work into one made-up uber-company then complaining there are not choices.
> the vast majority of job actually lie within a handful of firms.
First, that does not follow, especially for your example of pilots which I'll clearly show below).
And an individual wanting a new job is not forced to work only at the top few places - they still have choice, and the reason more work at the bigger employers is each employee chose that over every other available job. No central planning operation made them choose it. It's called paying market clearing rates if you really like econ 101.
Someone works in all those companies. Ignoring that there are jobs to move to, and ignoring that the top companies do not provide competition in the labor market is terrible logic or economics.
I'm also not making the mistake of claiming there is not constant, dynamic movements in the airline industry.
>Now, you are making the point that startups can enter the market. This is a red herring. Pilots can’t just start up an entire airline in order to get a new job.
No. There are 600+ firms right now. Making the black-and-white mistake of claiming that the top 10 are the same company and the rest are startups is ludicrous. I said nothing about pilots needing to move to some startup. Or do you claim those 600+ companies all started last week?
Stop making absolutist statements and look at the evidence: no one company has anywhere near monopoly power, there are hundreds of companies to choose from, and even if you somehow are barred by law or magic from applying outside the top 10, that is still a decent size to choose from.
And if you really want to focus on pilots, most do not work for the big companies. For example, American Airlines has ~20% of US market share [1]. They employ 12,700 [2] pilots of the ~700,000 [3] pilots in the US instead of the 136,000 they would employ to have also 20% of the pilot jobs. The reason is that there are far more pilot jobs not flying huge commercial planes full of people, and such jobs are scattered all over. This same pattern works across all the large airlines - the fact is most pilots do in fact work not for the big companies. Care to adjust your thinking now?
This is your opportunity to move more goalposts. I'm sure you can keep restricting classes from many industries, to airlines, to only the top one, to only pilots named Allen, and eventually you'll think you have a pilot without lots of places to work. But I suspect even then you'd fail to make the number of choices small.
So if you want to be honest about where people work, then do so. Don't lump things together incorrectly then claim market share equals employment, because that is not true. And don't lump companies that are competitors as one entity then claim there are not options.
First off, your statistic is wildly inaccurate. You’re citing the number of certified pilots, not the number of actively employed pilots, which is roughly 81k [0].
> Don't lump things together incorrectly then claim market share equals employment
It of course is going to vary by industry and job class, but overall it actually does correlate. As we’ve seen your analysis was off by ash order of magnitude for pilots.
>This is your opportunity to move more goalposts. I'm sure you can keep restricting classes from many industries, to airlines, to only the top one, to only pilots named Allen, and eventually you'll think you have a pilot without lots of places to work. But I suspect even then you'd fail to make the number of choices small.
Or perhaps I don’t want to have to go on a wild goose chase hunting down specific statistics on every industry.
That BLS link is a subset of employed pilots, only the class listed as airline pilots, but excludes commercial pilots. Here [1] is a BLS listing for both at 135k. As such, the above points still stand :)
20% market share for American Airlines would be 0.20*135 = 27,000, yet they only employ 12000 pilots. This is true for all the top companies (you can check).
And it still stands even using your numbers that are too low - I noticed you didn't check the math. But it truly holds for the proper BLS category.
So the overall point still stands - market share does not equal pilot employment, and more pilots are employed outside your odd grouping of companies, which is a nonsensical grouping as is - the biggest has 20% of the market, and < 10% of the jobs. So you still want to claim pilots don't have choices?
How many do they need? What country is better?
> As we’ve seen your analysis was off by ash order of magnitude for pilots
and yet when using corrected numbers all the points still stand, despite you trying to gorup 10 companies as one company.
> but overall it actually does correlate
Certainly it correlates - ignoring yet again that companies that are not large enough to dominate an employment simply cannot do so - they have to compete for workers.
> Or perhaps I don’t want to have to go on a wild goose chase hunting down specific statistics on every industry.
It's much easier to hold beliefs that don't match evidence when you're forming those beliefs while ignoring evidence. Try a few industries. Try to find even a single large sector of the US with very few employers, or an employer so large that they conceivable could dictate terms. And once you realize how hard it is to find this industry you seem to think pervades employment, you'll perhaps adjust your view to the reality of companies having to compete for employees across nearly all people in the US.
This is why it's worth carefully looking at the evidence, which so far seems to be: US workers in nearly every industry are the highest paid in the world, US workers in nearly industry are not facing monopoly employers, and grouping lots of companies that are too small to have such market dominance does not remove the fact they do provide competition for employees.
>There's almost 400 airlines.
>There’s over 1200 newpaper companies.
>Not exactly "extremely limited."
It’s extremely misleading to not factor in market share in this type of analysis.
Sure, there may be 400 airlines, but 10 make up 90% of the market. The notion that the other 390 make a material difference in the labor market for that industry is asinine.