Labor Economics – Page 92 – artdiamondblog.com

Labor Unions Endorse Hillary and Edwards

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article excerpted and cited below.

Union endorsements could provide a big boost with next year’s early, front-loaded primary calendar. Half of all 15.4 million union members live in six states — California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — and all but Pennsylvania will have voted by Feb. 5.

Major unions have already split their endorsements between three Democratic candidates: Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Christopher Dodd, and former Sen. John Edwards. Union leaders are loath to repeat the division of support that marred the 2004 election, where major unions endorsed Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean, wasting resources on losing candidates. Only one Republican candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, has picked up a major union endorsement.

For the full story, see:

NICK TIMIRAOS. "HOT TOPIC; U.S. Unions: Still a Political Power?" The Wall Street Journal (Sat., September 29, 2007): A7.

Online Job Sites Grow and Evolve

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article excerpted and cited below.

Among the hottest Web sites of the past few years were job-search sites such as CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com. Helped by lavish advertising, they became household names. Newspapers, eager to tap the fast-growing online-ad market, teamed up with them.

Now, the hottest names in online recruitment are increasingly specialized job sites. That poses a threat to the growth prospects of the broad-based online job boards and their newspaper partners, analysts said.

In August, the number of unique visitors to CareerBuilder — which is jointly owned by Gannett, Tribune, McClatchy and Microsoft — dropped 2% to 20.2 million, while Monster.com’s traffic rose 4% to 16.3 million visitors.

By contrast, technology-focused Dice.com saw its traffic jump 34% to 998,000. At Healthcaresource.com, which posts health-care jobs, traffic rose 36%.

For the full story, see:

EMILY STEEL. "ADVERTISING; Job-Search Sites Face a Nimble Threat Online Boards Become Specialized, Threatening Web-Print Partnerships." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., October 9, 2007): B10.

Florence in Its Prime: Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”

In my work on the labor economics of the process of creative destruction, I make use of the competition between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi over who would do the bronze door panels. Brunelleschi withdrew, after a "tie" decision from the judges. He then retooled, and bult the marvelous dome that is still one of the world’s architectural marvels.

If Michelangelo’s "David" heads the "must see" list of Renaissance masterpieces for most visitors to Florence, then I suspect "The Gates of Paradise," Lorenzo Ghiberti’s monumental doors of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, rank a close second. The 20-foot-tall portal — 10 exquisitely articulated gilt bronze reliefs of Old Testament scenes, framed by standing prophets, foliage and projecting heads — has mesmerized viewers since its completion in 1452. Michelangelo himself is supposed to have given the doors the name by which they are still known.

. . .

Next year, visitors to Florence will again see "The Gates" restored to their full splendor, permanently installed in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.

For the full commentary, see:

KAREN WILKIN. "Ghiberti’s Doors Are Heavenly Again." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., June 5, 2007): D5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

More Millionaires

The ranks of the richest Americans expanded last year at an increased pace, driven by a strong economy, but that growth is expected to moderate in coming years, according to a new study.

The 11th annual World Wealth Report, compiled by Merrill Lynch & Co. and Capgemini Group, shows that in 2006, the U.S. population of high-net-worth individuals — those with at least $1 million in investible assets, excluding their primary residences — rose 9.4% to 2.92 million. In 2005, the same population increased 6.8% to 2.67 million.

Robert McCann, president of Merrill Lynch Global Private Client Group, attributed the increased pace of wealth generation to gains in economic output and continued growth in the world’s stock markets, two primary drivers of wealth creation.

For the full story, see:

DAISY MAXEY. "Ranks of Rich in U.S. Grow at Faster Pace." The Wall Street Journal (June 28, 2007): D6.

Europeans Have More Leisure, But Not More Happiness

Perhaps the commentary excerpted below goes a bit too far. I do not believe that paid work is necessary for happiness. But I do think that a life mainly of leisure can wear thin. A few months ago I heard Deirdre McCloskey say that we need "projects" to keep us moving forward. I think that is right, and the best work involves challenging, meaningful projects.

By almost every measure, Europeans do work less and relax more than Americans. According to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Americans work 25% more hours each year than the Norwegians or the Dutch. The average retirement age for European men is 60.5, and it’s even lower for European women. Our vacations are pathetically short by comparison: The average U.S. worker takes 16 days of vacation each year, less than half that typically taken by the Germans (35 days), the French (37 days) or the Italians (42 days).

. . .

For most Americans, work is a rock-solid source of life happiness. Happy people work more hours each week than unhappy people, and work more in their free time as well. Even more tellingly, people with more hours per day to relax outside their jobs are not any happier than those who have less non-work time. In short, the idea that our heavy workloads are lowering our happiness is twaddle.

. . .

This may be one reason why Americans tend to score better than Europeans on most happiness surveys. For example, according to the 2002 International Social Survey Programme across 35 countries, 56% of Americans are "completely happy" or "very happy" with their lives, versus 44% of Danes (often cited in surveys as the happiest Europeans), 35% of the French and 31% of Germans. Those sweet five-week vacations and 35-hour workweeks don’t seem to be stimulating all that much félicité. A good old-fashioned 50-hour week might be a better option.

For the full commentary, see:

ARTHUR C. BROOKS. "Happy for the Work." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., June 20, 2007): A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Why New York City Needs Wal-Mart

(p. 7) . . . an enduring mystery of the retail economic world: why don’t people in New York City want a Wal-Mart in Midtown?

Manhattan is the most underserved market I have ever seen for retail customers. There really is nowhere for bargains on ordinary household goods and groceries in the whole borough. Yes, I know unions hate Wal-Mart. But not every New Yorker is in a union, and every New Yorker needs food and paper towels. (I, by the way, am a member of three unions: the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Writers Guild of America, West. How many unions is Mayor Michael Bloomberg in?)

Don’t the consumers deserve a break, too? I know Wal-Mart is not hip, slick and cool. It’s for people who have to live within a budget, not for people who see movies with subtitles and have houses on Martha’s Vineyard (or would like to). But don’t working-class people deserve bargains on their daily bread?

To keep Wal-Mart out of New York — or my home, Los Angeles — is simply to inflict a snobby class prejudice on working people. Why they and their representatives put up with this classist, ”let them eat Whole Foods” nonsense is yet another mystery, and one that could be solved if politicians really cared about consumers.

For the full commentary, see:

BEN STEIN. "EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS; Assorted Mysteries of Economic Life." The New York Times, Section 3 (Sun., May 13, 2007): 7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Total Retirement Assets Will Increase, Even as Baby Boomers Retire

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article cited below.

WILL stocks suffer a multidecade bear market as the baby-boom generation sells its shares to support its retirement? Some have predicted such an outcome, but a new study — which projects huge growth in 401(k) assets in future decades — paints a far more sanguine picture.

The study, “New Estimates of the Future Path of 401(k) Assets,” has been circulating since earlier this month as a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Its authors are James M. Poterba, chairman of the economics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Steven F. Venti, an economics professor at Dartmouth; and David A. Wise, a professor of political economy at Harvard. A version is at www.nber.org/papers/w13083.

Despite the baby boomers’ liquidation of retirement assets in coming decades, the study estimates that the total size of 401(k) plans will nevertheless grow markedly. That forecast may come as a surprise to some people, the professors concede, because 401(k)’s now represent only a modest fraction of a typical retiree’s total wealth. But the professors point out that 401(k) plans have existed only since the early 1980s; by the time that today’s younger workers retire, they will have had many more years to contribute to their 401(k)’s than current retirees have had.

For the full commentary, see:

MARK HULBERT. "STRATEGIES; Baby Boomers Are Cashing In. So What?" The New York Times, Section 3 (Sun., May 27, 2007): 5.

Better Measures of Worker Output, Increase Income Inequality

Many of us would say that income inequality is not bad, if it reflects differences in worker productivity. One argument in the article excerpted below, is that information technology has allowed better measurement of worker productivity, and hence is partly responsible for the increase in income inequality.

. . . as companies and compensation consultants began using information technology to determine more accurately the contributions of individual employees, employers began to discriminate among employees based on performance. In a working paper, Professor MacLeod, along with Thomas Lemieux of the University of British Columbia and Daniel Parent of McGill University, mined census data and found that the proportion of jobs with a performance-pay component rose to 40 percent in the 1990s from 30 percent in the late 1970s.

”Since companies are better able to measure precisely what an employee contributes, we’ve seen a greater range of incomes among people doing roughly the same jobs,” Professor MacLeod said.

The fact that more Americans are paid less on the basis of a job title and more on their individual output inexorably leads to greater inequality. The authors’ conclusion is that the rise of performance-based pay has accounted for 25 percent of the growth in wage inequality among male workers from 1976 to 1993.

”All the bits of evidence we have tend to say that this trend is continuing,” Professor Lemieux said. In 2003, the authors note, 44.5 percent of workers at Fortune 1000 companies received some form of performance-based pay, up from 34.7 percent in 1996. And think of the growing legions of self-employed — people selling items on eBay, mortgage brokers and real estate brokers, freelance journalists and consultants of all types — for whom all pay is performance-based. Among these growing cadres, the dispersion of incomes is rather large.

”When you look at the self-employed and contractors,” Professor Lemieux said, ”inequality is much higher.”

For the full commentary, see:

DANIEL GROSS. "ECONOMIC VIEW; Income Inequality, Writ Larger." The New York Times, Section 3 (Sun., June 10, 2007): 7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Why CEOs Are Paid So Much More than Other Near-Top Execs

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Like most companies, Office Depot has long made sure that its chief executive was the highest-paid employee. Ten years ago, the $2.2 million pay package of its chief was more than double that of his No. 2. The fifth-ranked executive received less than one-third.

But the incentive for reaching the very top of the company is now far greater. Steve Odland, who runs Office Depot today, made almost $12 million last year, more than four times the compensation of the second-highest-paid executive and over six times that of the fifth-ranking executive in the current hierarchy.

As executive pay has surged in most American companies, attention has focused on the growing gap between the earnings of top executives and the average wage of workers in cubicles or on the shop floor. Little noticed, though, is how much the gap has also widened between the summit and the next few echelons down.

. . .

The pay of chief executives, analysts say, is being driven by superstar dynamics similar to those that determine the inordinate rewards for pop stars and athletes — a phenomenon first explained by Sherwin Rosen of the University of Chicago in (p. C7) 1981 and underlined more than a decade ago by the economists Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook in their book “The Winner-Take-All Society” (Free Press, 1995).

As American companies, American hedge funds — and even American lawsuits — have grown in size, it has become ever more valuable to get the “best” chief executive or fund manager or litigator. This has fueled a fierce competition for talent at the top, which has pushed economic rewards farther up the ladder of success, concentrating the richest pay levels even more.

“There is an interaction between technology and scale which is true in all these businesses,” said Steven N. Kaplan, a finance professor at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago. “One person can oversee more assets, and this translates into more money.”

. . .

As companies grow and expand globally, the value of the top executive can grow exponentially. In a study last year, two economists, Xavier Gabaix of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Augustin Landier of New York University, argued that the fast rise in pay of corporate C.E.O.’s mostly reflected the growing size of American corporations.

Processing reams of data, the economists estimated that hiring the most effective chief executive in the country would, statistically, increase the stock value of a company by only 0.016 percent, compared with hiring the 250th chief executive. But at a company like General Electric, which is worth about $380 billion, that tiny difference would amount to $60 million.

This, the economists argued, helps explain why that top chief executive earned five times as much as the 250th. “Substantial firm size leads to the economics of superstars, translating small differences in ability to very large deviations in pay,” the economists wrote.

For the full story, see:

EDUARDO PORTER. "More Than Ever, It Pays to Be the Top Executive." The New York Times (Fri., May 25, 2007): A1 & C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Hispanic Immigrants May Help Rejuvinate Aging Workforce

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article cited below.

The article excerpted below sketches one solution to the "problem" of the aging boomer workforce. Michael Milken has suggested that the problem itself may be bogus, because aging, healthy, boomers will just keep on trucking a lot longer and stronger than is usually believed.

The quality of life for some 80 million graying baby boomers in the U.S. may depend in large part on the fortunes of another high-profile demographic group: millions of mostly Hispanic immigrants and their children.

With a major part of the nation’s population entering its retirement years and birth rates falling domestically, the shortfall in the work force will be filled by immigrants and their offspring, experts say. How that group fares economically in the years ahead could have a big impact on everything from the kind of medical services baby boomers receive to the prices they can get for their homes.

Immigrants and baby boomers are two groups whose destinies are converging in the next 20 years," says Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. "Baby boomers will surrender their economic role to this generation of immigrants and their children," who will evolve into a critical pool of laborers and taxpayers, he says.

Prof. Myers, author of the recent book "Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America," is among a crop of academics studying the link between the giant generation born between 1946 and 1964 and newcomers to the U.S., mainly Latin American immigrants.

For the full commentary, see:

MIRIAM JORDAN. "Boomers’ Good Life Tied To Better Life for Immigrants." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., May 7, 2007): A2.

Sweden’s Welfare State Destroys Work Ethic

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article cited below.

(p. A1) LULEA, Sweden — Lotta Landström is allergic to electricity — so says her doctor. Along with hundreds of other Swedes diagnosed with the condition in recent years, she came to rely on state-funded sick pay.

But last year, Sweden’s famously generous welfare system cut off Ms. Landström, a 35-year-old former teacher. Electro-hypersensitivity isn’t widely recognized elsewhere in the world as a medical diagnosis. The decision to end her two years of benefits was part of a broad effort to crack down on sickness and disability benefits, according to Swedish welfare officials.

Swedes are among the healthiest people in the world according to the World Health Organization. And yet 13% of working-age Swedes live on some type of disability benefit — the highest proportion on the globe. To explain this, many Swedish policy makers, doctors and economists blame a welfare system that is too lax and does little to verify individual claims.

At a time when low-cost competition from Asia is clobbering Europe’s markets and straining its generous welfare states, governments from Finland to Portugal are trying to cut back and get more people to work. Sweden’s bloated sick bay, which includes (p. A15) roughly 744,000 people on extended leave, has caused soul-searching about whether the system coddles Swedes and encourages them to feel sick.

"If we don’t look out, we will end up with only two-thirds [of the labor force] in work, and one-third out, living on different kinds of subsidies," said Sweden’s new prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, in an interview earlier this year.

At a time when low-cost competition from Asia is clobbering Europe’s markets and straining its generous welfare states, governments from Finland to Portugal are trying to cut back and get more people to work. Sweden’s bloated sick bay, which includes roughly 744,000 people on extended leave, has caused soul-searching about whether the system coddles Swedes and encourages them to feel sick.

"If we don’t look out, we will end up with only two-thirds [of the labor force] in work, and one-third out, living on different kinds of subsidies," said Sweden’s new prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, in an interview earlier this year.

. . .

Most of Sweden’s boom in sickness absenteeism since the late 1990s is about more than simple fraud. Sick leave for psychological conditions such as depression, burnout or panic attacks has rocketed. Over 20% of the population complain of anxiety syndromes. "We are actually the safest country in the world," says David Eberhard, chief psychiatrist at St. Göran’s hospital in Stockholm. But "people are feeling psychologically worse and worse."

Assar Lindbeck, one of Sweden’s best-known economists, says the lenient welfare state has changed the country over the past generation. In place of the old Protestant work ethic, it has become acceptable to feel unable to work and to live on benefits, he says. "I would not call it cheating," Prof. Lindbeck says. "I would call it a drift in attitudes and social norms."

By being so accommodating, the Swedish system has encouraged Swedes to treat life’s tribulations as clinical issues requiring sick leave, posits Anna Hedborg, a former Social Democrat cabinet minister: "As time has passed, we have medicalized all sorts of problems."

For the full story, see:

MARCUS WALKER. "Rx FOR CHANGE; Sweden Clamps Down On Sick and Disability Pay; Once Freely Dispensed, Benefits Face Scrutiny; Ms. Lanström Is Cut Off." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., May 9, 2007): A1 & A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

A former Swedish teacher who had been receiving government disability payments for being allergic to electricity. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article cited above.