Category: Labor Economics

Japan Population Down a Million in Five Year Period

(p. A12) TOKYO — Japan’s population shrank by nearly a million during the last half-decade, official census figures confirmed on Friday [February 26, 2016], an unprecedented drop for a society not ravaged by war or other deadly crisis, and one that helps explain the country’s persistent economic woes.
It was the first time since Japan began collecting census data in 1920 that a nationwide count recorded a decline in the population, though surveys based on smaller samples have shown a downward trend for years.

For the full story, see:
JONATHAN SOBLE. “Japan Lost Nearly a Million People in 5 Years, Census Says.” The New York Times (Sat., FEB. 27, 2016): A12.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 26, 2016.)

Greek Corruption, Fraud, Evasion and Public Worker Job Security

(p. A11) Mr. Angelos, a former Journal correspondent, travels through Greece as a journalist first, and a native son second, to conduct a mostly unpleasant archaeology. By way of background, however, he first tackles the pervasive issues of disability and pension fraud, rampant tax evasion, and public worker job protections. These are the very problems that Greece’s European lenders sought to remedy through a series of supposedly helpful but also punitive and ineptly administered reforms. Mr. Angelos dismantles the facile narrative accepted by many in the eurozone, in which hardworking Germans must clean up a mess made by their lazy and “Oriental” southern neighbors. But he is equally tenacious when it comes to exposing the misconduct of Greek politicians, not to mention the country’s corrupt system of career tenure and its, well, truly Byzantine bureaucracy.
Mr. Angelos’s book allows us to see how these problems play out, sometimes farcically, in the lives of actual people. There’s a cranky grandmother on the island of Zakynthos who receives generous blindness benefits even though she can see perfectly well. There’s the arrogant former prime minister who accepted millions of euros in bribes to buy useless submarines on behalf of the Greek government.
. . .
. . . the book’s single most flattering portrait is of Yiannis Boutaris, the tattooed, wine-making, freethinking mayor of Thessaloniki, who courts Turkish tourism, refuses to kowtow to the church and publicly acknowledges the crucial role of Jews in the city’s history.

For the full review, see:

CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN. “BOOKSHELF; How Greece Got to ‘No’; On the island of Zakynthos, a grandmother receives generous blindness benefits–even though she can see perfectly well.”The Wall Street Journal (Tues., July 7, 2015): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 6, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Angelos, James. The Full Catastrophe: Travels among the New Greek Ruins. New York: Crown Publishers, 2015.

Working for Uber Allows Flexibility for Aspiring Actors

(p. 8) Not long ago, being a waiter at the Ivy or a salesman at Fred Segal was considered the reliable way to earn a living until one got a big break in a Wes Anderson film and got picked up by a major Hollywood agency like CAA or WME.
But Krystal Harris, 27, an actress who appeared in the recent Kevin Hart film “About Last Night,” quickly realized those sorts of jobs were overrated. So now she works primarily for Lyft.
“I was a lead hostess at three different restaurants,” Ms. Harris said. “It really didn’t allow for much flexibility at all. I ended up getting fired for going to an audition. Even when I got my shifts covered, they gave me a hard time.”
In 2013, she turned her Ford Escape into a roving cash register. She had total control over her hours, never needing to clear her schedule with anyone for a last-minute audition. There weren’t even rules against working for both Uber and Lyft.
When acting gigs were hard to come by, she drove as many as 40 hours a week, earning what she estimated was about $20 an hour after Uber and Lyft took their commissions (generally around 20 percent). If the casting gods shined on her, she simply shut off the apps.
“When I’m really on a roll, I don’t have to work,” she said. “As long as my insurance and registration are up to date, I can go back.”
Mr. Totten had a similar experience. Before driving for Uber, he worked at a half-dozen restaurants. All those jobs ended when he had to take off for auditions, or was caught trying to learn lines on the job. Once, he refused to shave because a casting director was looking for someone with stubble.
“My look is my scruff,” said Mr. Totten, who is blond and blue-eyed, with a James Dean meets 90210 appeal. “As soon as I started driving for Uber, things got better.”
. . .
(p. 9) Recently, Mr. Totten considered getting a new side job. “I’m probably going to do Postmates,” he said, referring to the app-based service that delivers artisanal food in under 60 minutes and guarantees its drivers a minimum of $25 an hour. “You can’t live on this anymore.”

For the full story, see:
JACOB BERNSTEIN. “Drivers With Head Shots.” The New York Times, SundayStyles Section (Sun., JAN. 24, 2016): 1 & 8-9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 23, 2016, and has the title “The New Side Job for Actors and Artists in Los Angeles: Driving.”)

Americans Should Not Be Required to Join a Private Organization Against Their Will

(p. A15) I am one of 10 California teachers suing to end compulsory union dues in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which will be heard by the Supreme Court Jan. 11. Our request is simple: Strike down laws in 23 states that require workers who decline to join a union to pay fees anyway. In our view, paying fees to a union should not be a prerequisite for teaching in a public school. No one in the U.S. should be forced to give money to a private organization he or she disagrees with fundamentally. Teachers deserve a choice.
. . .
I was a member of the union for years and even served as a union representative. But the union never played an important role in my school. When most teachers sought guidance, they wanted help in the classroom and on how to excel at teaching. The union never offered this pedagogic aid.
Instead, the union focused on politics. I remember a phone call I received before a major election from someone in the union. It was a “survey,” asking teachers whether they would vote for so-and-so if the election were held tomorrow. I disagreed with every issue and candidate the union was promoting. After that conversation, I thought about what the union represents. Eventually, I realized that my dues–about $1,000 a year–went toward ideas and issues that ran counter to my beliefs.
. . .
A Gallup poll last year found that 82% of the public agrees that “no American should be required to join any private organization, like a labor union, against his will.” That’s all we’re asking.

For the full commentary, see:
HARLAN ELRICH. “Why I’m Fighting My Teachers Union; I don’t want to be forced to pay for a political agenda I don’t support. Now the Supreme Court will rule.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Jan. 4, 2016): A15.
(Note: ellipses added, italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 3, 2016.)

Yamir Jackson-Adens on How You Learn

(p. B4) PHILANTHROPISTS have poured millions of dollars into improving education in the United States — paying for new buildings, buying new computers and even creating new charter schools.
Susan Crown, a member of the billionaire Crown family of Chicago, is trying something different. Two years ago, she began working with organizations that seek to foster character traits like grit, empathy and perseverance, which studies show can be determinants of future success.
But financing organizations that focus on social and emotional learning programs for disadvantaged children was just part of the effort. Ms. Crown said she also wanted to go deeper into understanding why some organizations succeeded so well.
, , ,
Yamir Jackson-Adens, 18, began going to the Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory in eighth grade. Living in a poor section in the northeast part of the city, he said he had been bullied in elementary school, and he was still shy. The boat program intrigued him, even though he knew no one who owned a boat.
“In boat building, you learn stuff,” Mr. Jackson-Adens said. “You’re free to move. You don’t have a whole lot of restrictions. It’s more of a trial-and-error kind of thing. You learn from those mistakes. In school, if you fail, you’ve failed.”
. . .
Next fall, Mr. Jackson-Adens will be attending Colorado State University to begin studies that he hopes will lead to becoming a veterinarian.
“Boat got me into thinking outside the box,” he said. “It helped me adjust to different situations.”
That is a life skill anyone could use.

For the full story, see:
PAUL SULLIVAN. “A Philanthropist Drills Down to Discover Why Programs Work.” The New York Times (Sat., Feb. 6, 2016): B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Feb. 5, 2016.)

New Middle-Skill Jobs Combine Technical and Social Skills

DemingGraphOnMathSocialSkillJobs2015-10-18.jpgSource of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below, based on Deming paper cited further below.

(p. 4) For all the jobs that machines can now do — whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food — they still lack one distinctly human trait. They have no social skills.

Yet skills like cooperation, empathy and flexibility have become increasingly vital in modern-day work. Occupations that require strong social skills have grown much more than others since 1980, according to new research. And the only occupations that have shown consistent wage growth since 2000 require both cognitive and social skills.
The findings help explain a mystery that has been puzzling economists: the slowdown in the growth even of high-skill jobs. The jobs hit hardest seem to be those that don’t require social skills, throughout the wage spectrum.
“As I’m speaking with you, I need to think about what’s going on in your head — ‘Is she bored? Am I giving her too much information?’ — and I have to adjust my behavior all the time,” said David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University and author of a new study. “That’s a really hard thing to program, so it’s growing as a share of jobs.”
. . .
“If it’s just technical skill, there’s a reasonable chance it can be automated, and if it’s just being empathetic or flexible, there’s an infinite supply of people, so a job won’t be well paid,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s the interaction of both that is virtuous.”
Mr. Deming’s conclusions are supported by previous research, including that of Mr. Autor. Mr. Autor has written that traditional middle-skill jobs, like clerical or factory work, have been hollowed out by technology. The new middle-skill jobs combine technical and interpersonal expertise, like physical therapy or general contracting.
James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, did groundbreaking work concluding that noncognitive skills like character, dependability and perseverance are as important as cognitive achievement. They can be taught, he said, yet American schools don’t necessarily do so.

For the full commentary, see:
Claire Cain Miller. “The Upshot; The Best Jobs Require Social Skills.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., OCT. 18, 2015): 4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCT. 16, 2015, and has the title “The Upshot; Why What You Learned in Preschool Is Crucial at Work.”)

The Deming paper referred to above, is:
Deming, David J. “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., NBER Working Paper # 21473, Aug. 2015.

The Autor paper referred to above, is:
Autor, David. “Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., NBER Working Paper # 20485, Sept. 2014.

The Heckman paper referred to above, is:
Heckman, James J., Jora Stixrud, and Sergio Urzua. “The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior.” Journal of Labor Economics 24, no. 3 (July 2006): 411-82.

Technology Extends Capabilities of Older Japanese

(p. A1) TOKYO–At an office-building construction site in the center of Japan’s capital, 67-year-old Kenichi Saito effortlessly stacks 44-pound boards with the ease of a man half his age.
His secret: a bendable exoskeleton hugging his waist and thighs, with sensors attached to his skin. The sensors detect when Mr. Saito’s muscles start to move and direct the machine to support his motion, cutting his load’s effective weight by 18 pounds.
“I can carry as much as I did 10 years ago,” says the hard-hatted Mr. Saito.
Mr. Saito is part of an experiment by Obayashi Corp. , the construction giant handling the building project, to confront one of the biggest problems facing the company and the country: a chronic labor shortage resulting from a rapidly aging population. The exoskeleton has allowed Mr. Saito to extend his working life–and Obayashi to keep building.
. . .
(p. A14) The Fujisawa Aikoen nursing home about an hour outside Tokyo started leasing the “hybrid assistive limb,” or HAL, exoskeletons from maker Cyberdyne Inc. in June.
In Hokkaido, 60-year-old potato-pickers use rubber “smart suits” making it easier to bend over. Baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Haneda airport employ similar assistance.
In cases where older people simply can’t do the job or aren’t available, Japanese manufacturers are turning to robots, which help them keep costs down and continue growing.
Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s largest bank, employs a small robot speaking 19 languages to greet customers, while a Nagasaki hotel staffed mainly by robots opened in July. Komatsu Ltd. is developing self-driving vehicles for construction sites, while industrial robot maker Fanuc Corp. is designing machines that repair each other.
Toyota Motor Corp. is testing in homes its “human support robot,” a videophone/remote-controlled android that allows family and friends to perform tasks for distant elderly people as if they were in the same home. In one demonstration, a young man uses a tablet to look around a bed-bound older man’s room, then directs the robot to open the curtains and bring the older man a drink.
SoftBank Group Corp. earlier this year drew global attention when it put on sale in Japan an automaton called Pepper, which it called the world’s first robot capable of understanding emotions. One of the earliest uses for the 4-foot-tall white humanoid is as a nursing helper.
In a Kanagawa Prefecture test, Pepper entertained a room of 30 80- to 90-year-olds for 40 minutes. He led them in light exercises and tested their ability to recognize colors and letters. Women patted his head like a grandchild.
Showing a video of Pepper with a dementia patient on another occasion, Shunji Iyama, one of the developers, says the robot may sometimes work better than people. “That man keeps repeating himself over and over again,” Mr. Iyama said. “If Pepper were human, he’d get fed up, but he just repeats the same reaction and doesn’t get tired.”

For the full story, see:
Jacob M. Schlesinger and Alexander Martin. “Graying Japan Tries to Embrace the Golden Years.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Nov. 30, 2015): A1 & A14.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 29, 2015, and has the title “Graying Japan Tries to Embrace the Golden Years.”)

Uber Attracts Older Drivers for the Freedom, Flexibility, Adventure and Money

(p. B1) When Carol Sue Johnson, 73, wheels her silver Mazda S.U.V. out of her driveway in suburban Minneapolis, she doesn’t know how much money she will make driving for the ride-hailing service Uber, but she’s sure she will have an adventure.
Her passengers run the gamut, she said, from three visiting Chinese business executives who were surprised to see a female driver, to teenagers needing a ride to hockey practices or games.
When one group of teenagers “started to get too rowdy,” said Ms. Johnson, who goes by Sue, “one of them told the others to stop because ‘Grandma’s in the car.'”
. . .
(p. B4) For most senior drivers, the biggest advantage is the extra income. Many of those who continue working after 65 do so because they would be too poor otherwise, according to a new report from the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute that found the current retirement system inadequate.
But driving for a ride-booking service, some retirees said, also can offer more than money.
“I love the freedom, the flexibility — and the cash coming in every week,” said Maureen Mahon, 59, who first saw an Uber advertisement on the side of a bus in Manhattan. Ms. Mahon, who lives in Brick Township, N.J., said she had been laid off twice in recent years from Wall Street, and has been driving intermittently since mid-2014.
“I meet businessmen, college kids on their way out for the night, folks going to parties, pretty much the whole range,” she said. “You can drive as much or as little as you like. If the weather’s bad or you have a doctor’s appointment, you just don’t turn on the app.”
Another attraction, compared to driving a taxi, is safety, since customers are screened and no cash is exchanged. So, too, is the opportunity for drivers to shape the job on their own terms.
Driving for Uber “is like a game,” said Stephen B. McPhail, 66, a former charter bus driver who lives in Covington, Wash., south of Seattle. “I like to map out how I spend my time to make the most money.”
An early riser, he gets up at 4:30 a.m. to land several airport rides. Typically, he said, “I work five hours to make between $100 and $150 a day, and I can be done as early as 10 a.m.”

For the full story, see:
ELIZABETH OLSON. “Retiring; Retired, and Now Hitting the Road for Uber and Lyft.” The New York Times (Sat., JAN. 23, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 22, 2016, and has the title “Retiring; Older Drivers Hit the Road for Uber and Lyft.”)

“Minds Feel More Crimped, Fear More Pervasive, Possibility More Limited”

Maybe to lead happy or satisfying lives, we need more adventure, or more projects (hard and important ones) to commit ourselves to?

(p. 19) Freedom is still out there. We all have our idea of it, the deferred dream. Your psyche builds layers of protection around your most vulnerable traits, which may be closely linked to that precious essence in which freedom resides. Freedom is inseparable from risk.

. . .
I don’t know if the world is freer than a half-century ago. On paper, it is. The totalitarian Soviet Imperium is gone. The generals who bossed Latin America are gone, generally. Asia has unshackled itself and claims this century as its own. Media has opened out, gone social.
Yet minds feel more crimped, fear more pervasive, possibility more limited, adventure more choreographed, politics more stale, economics more skewed, pressure more crushing, escape more elusive.
. . .
Which brings me to Finnegan’s wonderful book, a kind of hymn to freedom and passion. Freedom is inside you. It’s the thing that cannot be denied. For Finnegan, that’s surfing and writing. “How could you know your limits unless you tested them?” he asks — a question as true before the ferocious energy of the wave as before the infinite possibilities of the written form.

For the full commentary, see:
Cohen, Roger. “Ways to Be Free.” The New York Times (Sat., JAN. 23, 2016): A19.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JAN. 21, 2016.)

The Finnegan book praised in the passage quoted above, is:
Finnegan, William. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.

Textile Production Moving from China Back to United States

(p. A1) INDIAN LAND, S.C. — Twenty-five years ago, Ni Meijuan earned $19 a month working the spinning machines at a vast textile factory in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
Now at the Keer Group’s cotton mill in South Carolina, which opened in March, Ms. Ni is training American workers to do the job she used to do.
“They’re quick learners,” Ms. Ni said after showing two fresh recruits how to tease errant wisps of cotton from the machines’ grinding gears. “But they have to learn to be quicker.”
Once the epitome of cheap mass manufacturing, textile producers from formerly low-cost nations are starting to set up shop in America. It is part of a blurring of once seemingly clear-cut boundaries between high- and low-cost manufacturing nations that few would have predicted a decade ago.
Textile production in China is becoming increasingly unprofitable after years of rising wages, higher energy bills and mounting logistical costs, as well as new government quotas on the import of cotton.
At the same time, manufacturing costs in the United States are becoming more competitive.
. . .
(p. A3) Ms. Ni, one of 15 Chinese trainers at Keer’s Indian Land plant, complained softly of American workers’ occasional tardiness. In China, she said, managers can dock the pay of workers who show up late. But here, she said, she felt frustrated that she could not discipline tardy staff.

For the full story, see:
HIROKO TABUCHI. “Chinese Textile Mills Are Now Hiring in Places Where Cotton Was King.” The New York Times (Mon., AUG. 3, 2015): A1 & A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 2, 2015, and has the title “Chinese Textile Mills Are Now Hiring in Places Where Cotton Was King.”)

Ten Quit, or Were Fired, “to Honor the Other 290”

(p. 1) A hellbent quest for authenticity produced some indelible on-set moments for Alejandro G. Iñárritu as he directed “The Revenant,” his two-and-a-half-hour opus of death, love and improvised surgery in the American West of the 1820s.
. . .
(p. 20) There were enough grumblings from the crew about delays, safety and overall misery that The Hollywood Reporter published an article in July in which one source described the experience as “a living hell.” Ten people either quit or were fired during filming, Mr. Iñárritu said, and he will not apologize for that.
“I have nothing to hide,” he said. “Of the 300 we started with, I had to ask some to step away, to honor the other 290. If one piece in the group is not perfect, it can screw the whole thing up.”
. . .
“Standing in a freezing river and eating a fish, or climbing a mountain with a wet bear fur on my back — those were some of the most difficult sequences for me,” said Mr. DiCaprio, who is considered a strong contender for an Oscar nomination for his performance. “This entire movie was something on an entirely different level. But I don’t want this to sound like a complaint. We all knew what we were signing up for. It was going to be in the elements, and it was going to be a rough ride.”
. . .
In person, . . . , Mr. Iñárritu has the chilled-out affect of a man who meditates every day and loves long walks. The only hint of intensity, and just a tinge of anger, comes when he discusses other movies. Too many of them today are like the products of fast-food chains, he said, ordered up by corporations that prize predictability and sameness over all else.
“What about going to a restaurant to be surprised?” he all but shouted. “That’s the risk that everybody avoids! In the context of cinema now, this movie is a bet.”
Raised in Mexico City, Mr. Iñárritu, 52, is the son of a banker who would eventually file for bankruptcy and end up selling fruit and vegetables to hotels and restaurants. The younger Iñárritu started off as a radio host, playing music and writing provocative, comical sketches with a political bent. He studied theater and learned to direct by shooting brand-identity commercials for a television station. By the time he landed his first feature, “Amores Perros,” released in 2000, he had spent hundreds of hours behind a camera. Then came “21 Grams” (2003), “Babel” (2006) and “Biutiful” (2010).

For the full story, see:
DAVID SEGAL. “That Bear and Other Threats.” The New York Times, Arts&Leisure Section (Sun., DEC. 27, 2015): 1 & 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 22, 2015, and has the title “About That Bear: Alejandro G. Iñárritu Discusses Making ‘The Revenant’.”)