By Simon Grey, on November 16th, 2011
Or maybe you’ll claim that you had it rough and we’re just a bunch of whiners. “Back when I was your age, I worked five jobs to get through college and I turned out fine!” But I’ll bet you didn’t have to deal with illegal Mexicans competing with you for those jobs, making whole sectors of the economy off-limits to white Americans. Or affirmative action. Or outsourcing, or downsizing, or any other of the retarded economic policies fostered and facilitated by both the Republicans and Democrats.
When the Boomers were first entering the workforce, illegal labor wasn’t a problem. This meant that Boomers could be reasonably sure of finding decent-paying jobs even if they did not have a college degree. So, because the labor market was smaller, they could earn more money.
Then they moved on with their careers, taking on higher-level management positions and entering white collar work. And then they decided that the things they wanted were too expensive, so they tweaked immigration laws to make it easier for businesses to employ cheap labor, driving down the cost of goods.
Of course, this means that the current generation is worse off because it cannot (legally) compete with black market labor, thanks to minimum wage laws, payroll taxes, and a whole host of other market interventions that black-market labor generally avoids.This, then, typifies the hypocrisy of Boomers. They take advantage of everything that society offered them in their youth and then change the rules when they get into power so future generations can’t do the same things they did. The Boomers are truly a generation that has only ever acted in bad faith. Don’t be surprised when their children and grandchildren do the same. Where do you think they will have learned it from?
By Christopher Briem, on September 28th, 2011
So you might think things are trending down for the regional economy if you take any of the stories on the unemployment rate ticking up (PG, Trib, PBT). True the unemployment rate ticked up a huge bit, 0.4 % points, between July and August. A big jump for sure, but not all unemployment rate increases are the same. So you really won’t catch this is you read the news, but consider at least two things on the state of the region’s labor market.
With data for August it has now been officially 59 months since the unemployment rate for the nation was lower than that for the Pittsburgh MSA. We know the national unemployment rate for September is stable. It is an awfully safe bet that there has not been enough convergence of the two time series to push the national unemployment rate below the regions. If true then September 2011 will mark 60 months, or 5 complete years since the local unemployment rate has been complete years since the local unemployment rate has been above the nations. You will not find any other comparable period of time that has ever been true in the past.
The bigger news story is something else. The Trib almost gets there and kind of mentions the fact that the labor force is indeed trending up. They say the August numbers just out are the largest labor force numbers for the region since December 2008. There is this thing called seasonal hiring that often kicks in for December which obscures the point a bit. To skip the seasonality, here are the August labor force totals for the Pittsburgh MSA (current 7 county definition) going back to the late 1970’s.
So yes, the labor force count for August is exactly tied with August 2008 for the largest labor force total for an August in the region’s history. History. All time. Ever. During a time when the national news is all about the lingering impacts on the labor market of the recession now ended, long term unemployment and declining labor force participation as folks become discouraged just about everywhere.
When you consider the obvious fact that there is a recession some other things are worth thinking about. Recessions have a general impact of lowering labor force participation. No reason to think that isnt happening here as well. Relative strength or not, the absolute unemployment rate is higher than normal, and the long term unemployed are likely dropping out of the labor force as they are elsewhere. We also know school enrollments in the region are up. Students tend not to be in the labor force as much as others, so that tends to push down labor force participation a bit.
So high labor force coupled with lower labor force participation equals something completely unmentioned in any of the news coverage as best I can tell. The number of people jumping in and out of the labor force is not anywhere near as variable as you might think reading the generic explanations of how the labor force data changes month after month. That exists of course, but long term there is this much bigger factor across the nation called migration that really changes the size of regional labor forces. At some point in the 1980’s the unemployment rate was exactly the same as it is here today. Does it mean the economic conditions back then have anything in comparison with today’s? In the 1980’s the metrics of unemployment would have been far far worse than they were for the entire decade if so many unemployed workers did not leave the region. Today, is the regional unemployment rate trending up because of deteriorating economic conditions? Or is it because we are pulling folks into the region by the relatively stronger economy compared to a lot of other places?
By Christopher Briem, on June 7th, 2011
We’ll crib off Mike explicitly this time, who is himself commenting on Harold’s column over the weekend on women owned businesses. All I can say it reminds me again of a quote I have wound up using a lot. Really, it is one of the most remarkable quotes I have ever found about the Pittsburgh economy, past, present, or future, and use whenever the topic comes up:
(Pittsburgh) will, however, slowly decline unless new industries employing women and those engaged in the production of consumer goods are attracted to the area.
Which is from a report written by a place called the Econometric Institute based in News York City and titled: “Long Range Outlook for the Pittsburgh Industrial Area”, stamped February 12, 1947 and was for the Allegheny Conference and the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce.
That date is no typo and as we have looked at this in depth, it really was true for a long long time that female labor force participation in Pittsburgh lagged the nation by a lot. It really took decades after the employment within manufacturing imploded for the region’s labor force to reach some semblance of gender-normalcy when compared to the nation. This change in the regional labor force I still will argue is the single biggest factor in the economic transformation of Pittsburgh over the last 25 years. Put another way, as long as women failed to have similar opportunities here compared to elsewhere, the entire regional economy was doomed to lag the nation. It was as predicted in 1947.
No secret that Harold is often talking about manufacturing. It is indeed the continuing decline in local manufacutring employment that has precipitated the speed at which we have achieved a new paradigm I mentioned recently as well… namely that the regional workforce has in some recent quarters become majority women. Here is some more specific data for employment in Allegheny County which has now been majority women year-round since 2005.
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