Opposite ends of the labor market face opposite problems (CS Monitor)

[pinto]

Rising efficiency and technology are adding work for highly paid professionals while taking it away from low-skill employees.

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
@ The Christian Science Monitor 2006


As Americans head away for Labor Day weekend, two extremes of the labor force are crying out for help.


Millions, often among the economy's most successful professionals, say they feel overworked while millions more, particularly among low-skilled workers, are starved for a paycheck or more work hours.

Experts say the two ends of the labor market are in fact the Janus faces of the same economic force. A higher level of economic efficiency is playing differently at the furthest points of the labor spectrum. With the help of improved technology, employers have grown adept at coaxing the most from their workers by monitoring productivity, basing pay on performance, and keeping the BlackBerry crowd connected to the workplace around the clock. The forces of globalization and technology, however, have made it harder for many workers with less education to find good jobs.

"We are in a watershed time in our economy, where technology has transformed how we work, globalization is changing the rules of the game for low-skilled, semiskilled workers," says John Challenger, an expert on workplace trends with the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago.

Labor market stress reveals inequality

The good news is that the ranks of the underemployed tend to drop as an economic expansion gathers momentum - and that's been the case for several years.

In fact, the unemployment rate is lower now than it was a decade ago - at a similar point during the long expansion of the 1990s. Many economists say that for all its strains and stresses, the US economy offers greater opportunities for workers now than ever.

But as Labor Day arrives, the pace of economic growth appears to be slowing. And some economists worry that, despite a low official unemployment rate, the share of the population that's employed remains lower than it ought to be.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0901/p01s02-usec.html

[FloridaPat]

1. For the first time in history, it is the people with a lot of education

loosing their jobs. The jobs are going overseas or in the case of computer programming - they are bringing a ton of programmers from other countries to work for half the price. I was out of work for almost 3 years because my gov't say exporting computer jobs is good for the economy. We are all getting the shaft. Repubs don't like workers unless they're paid peanuts.

[eallen]

2. Hardly the first time. Talk to any older aerospace engineer.

[FloridaPat]

3. My brother started his major in that in 1966. That was the year

engineering jobs disappeared. He went into law instead.Forgot about that!

[pinto]

4. I think part of today's situation is that the US economy can't absorb

or adjust as well as in the past to these changes. I'm no economist, by a long shot, but it seems when we had shifts in employment patterns before, jobs opened up in other *parallel* sectors. But the loss of living wage, entry level jobs here and export of degreed positions overseas leaves a gaping hole.

[Demeter]

5. It's the Deliberate UNEMPLOYMENT Patterns that Are Killing Us

Income in Michigan alone is down 12% from before Bush took office--and that's in spite of the hordes of people who have left the state to find work.

[PATRICK]

6. Techno-fantasy

My workplace is probably not the only one. A new system or, more fatally, a new wave of "labor-saving" machinery comes in. To make way or in the need for an act of faith, the bridges are all burned to the old, the old stuff trashed, the workforce alreay downsized and overworked waiting for the marvels to be installed. There is even the tone: "you guys are a thing of the past, we'll turn the lights out on all human workers, ahahaha! And we sigh and try to prepare for... the overtime.

The new things don't work up to expectations, are mortal like the rest us. Workers and work hours fill the gap, but the ultimate sign of defeat, hiring more workers... that they will not do. But they do work enough to increase productivity and the more the workers make up for the flaws the better. From justification to glory th e squeeze continues. The new machine ages and shows very stupid vulnerabilities. Patches are added to boost it. When you get to the duct tape and paper clips you know it has reached its zenith.

Unreality, demoralization, myth, the impetus of this denial continues to pressure for more of the same, like trench warfare in WWI. Appropriate technology and rational use are things that become obsolete as much as the hands on low productivity days of yore. For, if there was strict accountability and caution the pressure would be conservative AGAINST innovation. Fear or fenzy.

The whole system also is nuts. Only when a company or an economy has driven itself into the ground in this fashion, faster growing profits at all costs to the present and future sanity of business, can you prove your arguments, but the grasping managers of this illusion will still not listen.