I've noticed that over the past two years or so, the content of Yahoo's homepage has deteriorated rapidly, but as I am a creature of habit and a glutton for punishment, I continue to check it daily. In my daily reading, I came across an editorial written by University of Georgia economist and Forbes contributor Jeffrey Dorfman called "When Did We Get Too Proud For Entry-level Jobs?" Now admittedly, I read that title and was skeptical, but I decided to hear him out and keep an open mind. Surely this economics professor would back up assertions with some hard data and force me to reevaluate my own biases. In retrospect, I have far too much faith in the academic diligence of economists.
In his editorial, Dorfman argues from his ivory tower that increasing the minimum wage and improving work conditions are really just distractions from the real issue which is today's kids just don't want to do entry level jobs. Now I think we have all known people like that at one point in our life, but it seems like Dorfman might be overstating the prevalence of this a bit. After all, if fast food and retail workers are entry level jobs, then I see plenty of people working in them. Please Mr. Dorfman, tell us about your life experience:
Most of us (at least those of us who are older) remember starting out in the world of work at the very bottom. In the old days, kids took jobs delivering newspapers, doing yard work for neighbors, pet sitting, babysitting, etc. Many of these jobs earned far less than the minimum wage, but the kids didn’t complain; we were glad to earn a little spending money.Interesting, I'm a "Millennial" and I did all those things. I've worked as a cashier, cooked fast food, shoveled snow for my neighbors, babysat, house-sat, and delivered papers. Furthermore, most of the people I grew up with had similar experiences too. The kids didn't complain huh? Okay, I'll take your word for it. Go on:
Fast food jobs or retail sales jobs in local stores were actually considered good jobs by most teens as the pay was high (meaning minimum wage) and we earned real work experience. Those working such jobs did not see them as career paths per se, but as a way to get started in the world, earn some money, and start on a path toward our future.This is where I feel his argument fall apart. Any wage is high when you have no living expenses and while the percentage of hourly workers at or below the Federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) over the age of 25 is small (3.8% BLS Minimum Wage), the age and number of workers who would be affected by a wage hike to the poverty wage of $10.10 an hour increases dramatically with an average age of 35 (EPI). Anecdotally, I frequent establishments that pay near the bottom of the wage scale daily and most of the employees are adults. Furthermore, the lack of teenagers in these jobs probably has less to do with kids not wanting to work them and more to do with adults who previously had good paying jobs, taking entry level jobs to try and scrape on by.
After high school or college, the references from these jobs helped people to secure more permanent employment. Over time, as people gain job skills and job experience, their pay tends to rise. Thus, rather than seeing entry-level jobs as some evil that need to be stamped out or wanting to force the pay for those jobs to an artificially high level, people saw them as a stepping stone on a way to a brighter future. Empirics bears out this relationship as much of the income distribution we hear so much about these days can be explained by people of different ages being at different points in their lifetime earning arc (i.e., the low earners are the young and the old while the high earners are those in their prime earning years).Again, I'm not really sure who he's talking about. Yes references help, but a reference from some burger flipping manager will only get you so far absent other skills that actually pertain to an industry where you can make a decent living. While he is correct that income distribution is heavily correlated with age (empirics that he neglects to cite specifically by-the-way), if you look at a comparison between 1998 and 2013 of median earnings based on educational attainment, in 1998 a high school diploma was worth $685 (inflation adjusted with CPI calculator) while in 2013 it was worth $651. College graduates did slightly better with $1173 in 1998 vs $1194 in 2013 and I suspect if you dig out the older data it will be clear that we're getting screwed compared to "GenXers" and the "Baby Boomers" when it comes to getting paid (BLS Earnings).
As for forcing pay to artificially high levels, the market is a social construct, it's all artificial. If the minimum wage was $.01 an/hour employers would pay a lot less. If slavery was legal you can bet your ass many employers would have slaves. This type of economic argument is silly.
A great example of a positive attitude towards entry-level jobs was provided last year by the actor Ashton Kutcher in a Teen’s Choice Award acceptance speech. He spoke about how opportunity looked a lot like hard work. He spoke directly to today’s kids, saying “I never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. Every job I had was a stepping stone to my next job and I never quit my job before I had my next job.”Now he's really going off the rails. What the hell does Kelso's work experience have to do with millions of workers competing over jobs? While I applaud Kutcher's self-proclaimed work ethic, I know people with similar ethic who aren't multimillionaires. Hell, there are plenty of people who work way harder than me and make less money, try working in mental health or social work.
So much of the debate over the minimum wage, fast food worker pay, even pay at Walmart seems to revolve around the idea that all jobs should pay a “living wage,” which is taken to mean somebody’s idea of an amount of money that allows a person or family to live with dignity. Yet this ignores the point made by Mr. Kutcher that some jobs are stepping stones on the way to better ones. While which jobs are in each category will vary by person, not every job is meant to support a family.Yes, a minimum wage is arbitrary, but what is abundantly clear to me is that it is nearly impossible for anyone to pay rent and eat at anywhere near $7.25 an hour. Whether or not it was the intent of these jobs to support a family or not, these are the jobs that actually exist. We used to have assembly lines filled with "low skill" workers who made good middle class wages, now those jobs are gone and have been replaced with burger assembly lines, only these jobs pay poverty wages. I really don't see that much of a difference.
Rather than complaining about the pay or working conditions, we need a work ethic in this country that encourages people to be great employees whatever their current job is. Then, if you don’t like that job, it will be easy to find a better one. A friend that owns a number of fast food restaurant once told me that any employee can become one of his most valued workers by mastering three behaviors: show up on time, be properly dressed, and don’t hit a customer. If you want a dependable schedule that fits your life, do those three things and the boss will let you choose when you want to work.This is such nonsense. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since 1990 although wages have not (Trading Economics). I don't doubt that showing up on time, being properly dressed, and not hitting a customer would make you a valuable fast food employee because at a poverty wage what else are you expecting? Here's an economic concept: you get what you pay for. As for getting a schedule that fits your life, don't count on it.
The hard reality is that our economy is unlikely to eliminate all the low wage jobs that exist today, and if we did, unemployment would go way up.He yet again provides zero evidence.
Instead of interfering with the labor market to push wages in such jobs far above their natural levels, we should take a different approach. First, instead of leaders denigrating such jobs, we should praise them as the opportunities that they are. Second, we should install educational programs and government policies that make it easier for people in such jobs to acquire additional skills and move up from their entry-level jobs to better paying ones.Again this "natural" argument. What the hell is natural about McDonald's? Give me a break. You know what would provide people with opportunities? Paying them more. On his second point I agree, although at the beginning of his editorial he criticized people like Mayor De Blasio for instituting job training. I'm beginning to think that maybe Dorfman has an agenda.
He finishes with some more kind words about Mr. Kutcher in two paragraphs that lack any kind of actual content whatsoever. Read the whole thing here.
I can't help but wonder, what gave Mr. Dorfman this world view? So I Googled him. I found a bunch of bad articles he wrote, his CV, and some ratings from students. Now I don't place a whole lot of stock in professor ratings, but I did notice a distinct pattern: his classes are easy (at least according to the reviews). So maybe his view of "Millennials" is shaped by the students who take his class to get an easy A. Perhaps, if he's so concerned about work ethic, he should demonstrate some himself and challenge his students a little more.
Sources:
Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-workers-older-88-percent-workers-benefit/
BLS Minimum Wage
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012tbls.htm#1
BLS Earnings
http://www.bls.gov/cps/earnings.htm
Trading Economics
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/productivity
Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2015/01/08/when-did-we-get-too-proud-for-entry-level-jobs/
No comments:
Post a Comment