From the Economist: Vanishing Workers

The Economist: Vanishing Workers

Key Infographic:


Excerpt:

As the graphic shows, the American female is doing a good job of replenishing the US workforce, where that is not the case in Europe. European females tend to wait longer to have children, and (quite possibly) therefore have fewer. Particularly Germany, that is having a devil of time finding/training workers.

Europe has a worker problem, and should be treating (at least the Syrian migrants) as a godsend.

As Yellen has hinted, interest-rates could rise - even if this last one recently was rather miniscule. Remember, thankfully, Congress (once upon a time) had the good sense to make sure that the PotUS could not fire the head of the Fed.

So, she'll be around until Feb. 2018. Then, all hell breaks loose with this administration as Donald Dork seeks a replacement ...

 

Excellent graph on top. Can you repost that graph in a second post here so that I can click a post like on it?

I would like to take the opposition argument at your interpretation though. I must say, that in the current world of technological elimination of all jobs, fewer workers born is a good thing.

Apart from this, Europe has a very nasty recent history of looting its own working people, which continues today with ultra nationalistic institutional hatred between members of the European Union, so fewer women getting pregnant is poetic justice.

 

Robots will continue to fill jobs

 

Let's hope so.

There is nothing more moronic that doing precisely the same job in the same way day-in and day-out ...

 

Empowering women is the right answer. Empowering women has always been the winning solution to keep population growth in check with economy and market conditions. Women's reproductive rights and contraception. That will and has always ensured the balance of birth rates.

 

It would seem the American female is not doing as "good a job" as you might think.

Actual census projections.

It would seem we have the immigrant to thank for our growing population, not the American female.

Kinda makes you wonder given some people's feeling about the effects of immigration.

Check it out here in real time.....

 

For many of us, yes. But for some of us it's suitable.

http://www.businessballs.com/stories.htm#the biscuit factory story

 

But we don't benefit from poor illegal people having lots of children. We have to pay for their food, their medical, and their education. The additional financial burden is part of why American working women can't find the time, energy or money for more than one child.

 

Source?

 

Then expect to be replaced by less costly automation.

Why should consumers pay your premium costs unless there is a clear economic advantage ... ?

 

I am not concerned with census numbers that are in the aggregate.

The infographic shows that the "working-age" population is increasing in the US. This ultimately means less leisure time and more work-time. Which, I feel, is best for any population.

But, with caveats:
Attitudes differ between Europe and the US. Americans actually "like to work", since it is also a precious "social venue" that they appreciate. The US is probably the only advanced country on earth where workers give "vacation time" back to their employers.
*My experience in Europe tells me otherwise for European attitudes. The sooner they are out with a pension, the better (they feel).

Indeed, it is perhaps different in the US where Americans feel that it is an "indignity" to work at menial jobs. Still, it is the children of menial-job migrants who typically are assimilated as "first generation real Americans". (I am one of them.)

The migrant "problem" (if indeed there be one) is due to two reasons - both at the high and low end of the work spectrum:
*At the high-end barely 45% of Americans graduating from high-school obtain a postsecondary education. As the nation progresses from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, it is the latter that are truly needed in the economy. (And because we can't find enough of them, we bring them in from abroad on "temporary assignments" that turn eventually permanent.)
*We need workers at the low-end "grunt work", because Americans don't like or don't want to do such work. This attitude is not just American, we are seeing it in Europe as well. So, if we don't want migrants-who-become-immigrants to do the "grunt-work", who will do it?

(Ask Donald Dork if he has answer to that question, because he's hired a great many very lo-cost migrants to make the beds and clean the rooms in his hotel chains ...)

 

Despite Early Optimism, German Companies Hire Few Refugees

One out of three German companies says it plans to hire refugees this year or next. But only 7 percent of all German firms have actually done so in the last 24 months, according to the Institute for Economic Studies in Munich, which polled managers earlier this year.

And a grand total of 54 refugees have managed to find employment with the country's biggest 30 companies, according to a survey in June by the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Fifty of them are employed by Deutsche Post.

 

Not to be disagreeable, but in the interest of friendly conversation, I'm curious, why do you feel less leisure time and more work time is best? And I guess we should define leisure time. I mean, I spend my leisure time studying economics (I know fun never stops at my house) I spend time with my kids, I shoot, do work on my house, volunteer, teach, I play a video game or two and spend time in a few community groups. I guess my point is, leisure time can still be productive, In anticipation of your answer, I guess throwing glass bottles against a wall could also be considered "leisure time" for some. I guess the "value" of all leisure time isn't equal.

I don't have the benefit of the experience of having spent time in Europe (something my wife and I were just talking about doing the other night, but it is interesting how cultural attitudes can be so much different.

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Having been a person who started out at the bottom, I've washed dishes, I've put shoes on people's feet, I've cleaned up new housing after construction was finished....So I've done some crappy jobs in my life and I've known people that have done much "harder" jobs. The idea that there are jobs Americans won't do is, IMO a fallacy. I'd say that there are jobs Americans won't do at wages that employers are willing to pay. There are also jobs people won't do for ungrateful, unappreciative even abusive management.

I agree, but as you put it, our economy must move into the information age and embrace the fact that 12 years of free school is no longer enough to compete globally. We've upped the amount of schooling in the past I think it's time we consider the fact that 16 years of education should be standard.

Secondary education is so expensive that people are making the choice not to obtain a degree simply because, 1) A person cannot be assured that there $30-$70k investment won't be obsolete by the time they finish college 2) They get saddled with so much debt, not going to school starts to look a an extremely viable option.

 

The need for labor is inversely proportional to the demand for goods and services. German companies are going to hire Germans before they hire foreigners (all other things being equal).

Germany will have to find a home for greater amounts of productivity if there is any hope of finding jobs for the recent influx of non-Germans. Having said that, the increase in potential productivity put downward pressure on wages can put Germany in a good position (albeit arguably) to increase output without driving inflation do to wage shortages. The problem is, it won't matter unless they, as a nation, can increase the demand for their goods and services.

 

Huh?

The Demand for labor is directly proportional to Demand for goods 'n services over time, and not the inverse.

Germany, like the US, is unable to meet the Demand with local staff. Which is why it exports jobs to Poland. That too is reaching a maximum. So, the Demand of migrant labor, if trained, will begin to rise. The Germans have very little other choice, it's women are not having enough children. (Like most of Europe.)

The Demand for migrant labor has not changed for the past 60 years since the end of WW2.

From Speigel: German Companies See Refugees as Opportunity - excerpt:

Please do not try to reinvent the economics of Market-demand ...

 

Well, going back to square one, if they don't have a greater demand for goods and services, why import laborers that aren't needed?

 

Who knows, first perhaps they must learn German ...?

 

You don't need an increase in productivity to have a downward pressure on wages, just increase the labor force, which Germany is apparently trying to do. I'm not sure that "downward pressure on wages" is something the German voter is going to get behind.

 

I agree fewer workers would be a good thing since robotics is around the corner. The only problem is we will always need enough workers to support the older generations. This is why our government allowed so many foreigners to move here to replace the difference in birth rates after the 4 million birth rate that marked the baby boomer generation.

 

Just for the record, I didn't say you needed an increase in productivity, I said, "potential productivity". That is, as the pool of unemployed (potential labor) increases, people are generally willing to take less to secure jobs in an ever more competitive market for jobs.

 

Absolutely correct. I miswrote that. Thank you for the correction.

I assume that was for someone else?

 

From the Economist: Vanishing Workers; from the ECONOMY: vanishing work.

 

THE COMMON CURRENCY

Yes, if the EU today is in deep-sneakers regarding the Euro the reason is because it deserves to be there.

The additions to the original group that subsequently founded the "Eurozone" all signed the same Treaty of Maastricht. When the fit-hit-the-shan with the Great Recession imported from the US, the southern underbelly all had consequently enormous Debt-problems.

The Maastricht Treaty (as part of its Convergence Criteria for the Eurozone - see here) stipulates that Debt as a percentage of GDP must not be above a level of 3% of GDP per annum.

However, those of the soft southern underbelly of the EU (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece), many could not (or would not) meet that criteria. So, the EU was oblige to lend them Euros in order to help make their National Debt interest-rate schedules. Otherwise the debtor-nations above the 3% of GDP limit could have sunk the Euro in terms of larger (meaning beyond the EU) commercial trade.

Of course, this series of debt-payment manipulations never really solved the core problem - that is, too much national debt because not one debtor-country really wanted to bite-the-bullet and reduce government expenditures. Which would have meant politically a hardship for national leadership parties.

Furthermore, in 2016, the Commission concluded on 7 June that none of the countries examined (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden) fulfilled all conditions for adopting the euro.

Does this mean the Euro is failing? No, it is still the common currency of most of the EU. And despite the naysayers to the contrary, the Euro still functions adequately well in all national exchanges of commerce between one another.

ABOUT BREXIT

Not even Brexit matters to the Euro, since Britain is not a Eurozone country; for which the Brits will come to regret with a reduction of total EU trade as a percentage of total external trade. But, that is quite a different matter - any people who would be swayed by an idiot like Farage deserves the consequences .

The rabid-Right in Europe have never changed fundamentally since the Nazis. They always argue for extreme measures to protect a so-called precious nation-state autonomy.

They don't understand that the economic strength of the EU derives principally from its internal commercial trade. The EU has a GDP greater than that of the "other nation-state", the US ...

 

That aint necessarily so unless you adopt it as a mantra , which some might like to do ...

 

No matter how often you repeat your beliefs, it won't change the tide of automation and information that is making the world less labor intensive.