Edward Conard

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  • “Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…serious thinking for serious thinkers. …a thought-provoking blueprint for growing middle- and working-class incomes.” - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
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Sunday, September 3, 2017

On cutting the corporate tax rate, GOP must go permanent or go home

AI Summary. A temporary corporate tax rate cut can raise the net tax burden on new investment, because it reduces the value of deductions for investment costs more than it lowers taxes on the resulting payoffs, delivering windfalls to existing capital. A permanent cut offset by other tax increases or spending cuts would instead lower that burden, attract capital, and raise wages.

Alan Viard American Enterprise Institute
Date Posted:
September 3, 2017
Is Database:
Database

Temporary corporate tax cuts are counterproductive, increasing the net tax burden on new investments & discouraging new investments. A permanent rate cut, offset by other tax increases or spending cuts, would boost economic growth.

Temporary corporate tax cuts are counterproductive, increasing the net tax burden on new investments & discouraging new...

Does a temporary corporate tax cut raise taxes on new investment?

Core argument: A temporary corporate tax cut can raise the net tax burden on new investments because it reduces the tax savings from cost deductions by more than it lowers taxes on the resulting payoffs.

A temporary corporate tax cut is counterproductive, as it can increase the net tax burden on new investments by reducing tax savings from cost deductions more than it lowers taxes on payoffs. This timing mismatch discourages new investments and primarily benefits existing ones, offering windfall gains to companies without boosting economic growth. Additionally, a temporary cut financed by deficits exacerbates the issue by increasing government debt, which raises interest rates and hinders investment long after the cut expires. A permanent rate cut, offset by other tax increases or spending cuts, would lower the net tax burden on investments, attract capital to the U.S., enhance worker productivity, and increase wages. Therefore, a permanent solution is essential for sustainable economic growth.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. A temporary corporate tax cut can raise the net tax burden on new investments because it reduces the tax savings from cost deductions by more than it lowers taxes on the resulting payoffs.
  2. The timing mismatch of a temporary corporate tax cut discourages new investment and mainly rewards existing capital, delivering windfall gains to companies without raising economic growth.
  3. A permanent rate cut offset by other tax increases or spending cuts would lower the net tax burden on investment, attract capital to the U.S., raise worker productivity and lift wages, whereas a deficit-financed temporary cut adds debt that raises interest rates and deters investment after the cut expires.

“…Unfortunately, deficit financing would make a temporary tax cut even more harmful. The tax cut would leave a larger government debt in its wake, which would drive up interest rates, impeding investment long after the tax cut expired. Any tax increases that might eventually be adopted to service the extra debt would inflict further economic damage. A deficit-financed temporary tax cut is no substitute for what the country needs: a permanent corporate tax rate cut with the revenue loss offset by other tax increases or spending cuts. When it comes to cutting the corporate tax rate, Republicans should go permanent or go home….”

Alan Viard, "On cutting the corporate tax rate, GOP must go permanent or go home," American Enterprise Institute, August 25, 2017, https://www.aei.org/articles/on-cutting-the-corporate-tax-rate-gop-must-go-permanent-or-go-home/

On cutting the corporate tax rate, GOP must go permanent or go home

Republicans are eager to cut the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Permanently cutting the tax rate — one of the highest in the world — would be a good way to grow the economy. Unfortunately, some Republicans are talking about making the rate cut temporary.

A temporary rate cut would be worse than no rate cut at all. Not only would a temporary cut do nothing to lower long-run tax burdens, it would actually raise taxes on some investments made while it is in effect. Rather than encouraging new investment, a temporary cut would primarily give companies windfall gains on investments they’ve already made.

Under corporate income tax rules, companies are taxed on the payoffs from their investments, but are allowed to deduct the costs of making the investments. Cutting the tax rate affects both sides of the equation. The taxes on the payoffs go down, but so do the tax savings from the cost deductions.

A permanent rate cut lowers the net tax burden on investment. Because the typical investment’s payoffs are bigger than its costs, the lower tax bills on the payoffs outweigh the smaller tax savings from deducting the costs. The lower tax burden is likely to draw investment to the United States, making American workers more productive and boosting their wages.

A temporary rate cut has very different effects. It can actually raise the net tax burden on new investments, depending on when the payoffs are earned and when the costs are deducted. With a temporary rate cut, timing is everything, as taxes go down only on the payoffs that are earned during the time the rate cut is in effect and tax savings shrink only for the costs that are deducted during that time.

Suppose, for example, that an investment’s payoffs are spread over 20 years, but that the tax rules provide that its full costs are immediately deducted when it is made. If the investment is made shortly after a 10-year rate cut starts, the rate cut reduces taxes only on the payoffs earned during the first half of its life, but shrinks all of the tax savings from the immediate cost deduction. Things are even worse if the investment is made shortly before the rate cut expires. The rate cut then applies to almost none of the payoffs, but still shrinks all of the tax savings from the cost deduction.

The temporary rate cut is somewhat less harmful if the tax rules provide that an investment’s costs are depreciated over a number of years. But the problem doesn’t go away. Because the depreciation deductions are generally claimed earlier than the payoffs are earned, a temporary rate cut still applies to a bigger share of the deductions than of the payoffs, particularly if the investment is made shortly before the rate cut expires. The tax burden on new investments may still rise or may fall only slightly.

Even if the temporary rate cut offers little help for new investments, it reduces government revenue because it lowers taxes on the ongoing payoffs companies receive from investments made before the rate cut took effect. The temporary rate cut primarily gives companies an unexpected gain on their past investments rather than an incentive to make new investments. This helps corporate shareholders, but not the economy.

The need to address the tax cut’s revenue loss has spurred the recent interest in making it temporary. Senate rules protect a temporary tax cut from a filibuster even if it adds to the deficit, but protect a permanent tax cut only if it its revenue loss is offset by other tax increases or entitlement cuts. Some Republicans want to make the tax cut temporary, so that they can more easily use deficit financing.

Unfortunately, deficit financing would make a temporary tax cut even more harmful. The tax cut would leave a larger government debt in its wake, which would drive up interest rates, impeding investment long after the tax cut expired. Any tax increases that might eventually be adopted to service the extra debt would inflict further economic damage.

A deficit-financed temporary tax cut is no substitute for what the country needs: a permanent corporate tax rate cut with the revenue loss offset by other tax increases or spending cuts. When it comes to cutting the corporate tax rate, Republicans should go permanent or go home.

  • Productivity
    • Incentives/Risk-Taking
    • Investment
  • Fiscal Policy
    • Taxation

To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now

AI Summary. Outsourcing lower-skilled jobs to contractors has contributed to rising wage inequality and declining mobility, with pay falling 4–7% for janitors and 8–24% for security guards at firms that outsourced. The authors estimate this shift accounts for 20% of the increase in wage inequality from 1989 to 2014.

Neil Irwin New York Times
Date Posted:
September 3, 2017
Is Database:
Database

The shift of lower-skilled work to contractors has contributed to declining mobility & rising inequality. Pay for janitors fell by 4-7% & for security guards by 8-24% in companies that outsourced.

The shift of lower-skilled work to contractors has contributed to declining mobility & rising inequality. Pay for...

Does outsourcing lower-skilled jobs to contractors widen wage inequality?

Core argument: Outsourcing lower-skilled work accounts for 20% of the increase in wage inequality from 1989 to 2014, as companies shifted janitorial, security, and similar roles to contractors.

The shift of lower-skilled work to contractors has contributed to declining mobility and rising inequality. In the 1980s, Kodak employed 60,000 people in Rochester with average pay and benefits worth $79,000 in today's dollars, fostering middle-class wealth. In contrast, Apple's current model employs fewer direct workers, with many roles outsourced, leading to lower compensation. Pay for janitors fell by 4-7% and for security guards by 8-24% in companies that outsourced. This shift accounts for 20% of the wage inequality increase from 1989 to 2014. The contracting economy pressures wages downward, reducing opportunities for advancement and stability for lower-skilled workers.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Outsourcing lower-skilled work accounts for 20% of the increase in wage inequality from 1989 to 2014, as companies shifted janitorial, security, and similar roles to contractors.
  2. Pay for janitors fell 4–7% and for security guards 8–24% at companies that outsourced those functions.
  3. Kodak employed 60,000 people in Rochester in the 1980s with average pay and benefits worth $79,000 in today's dollars, while Apple employs fewer direct workers, outsourcing many roles at lower compensation.

Neil Irwin, "To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now,"New York Times, September 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-rising-inequality-consider-the-janitors-at-two-top-companies-then-and-now.html

To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now

ROCHESTER — Gail Evans and Marta Ramos have one thing in common: They have each cleaned offices for one of the most innovative, profitable and all-around successful companies in the United States.

For Ms. Evans, that meant being a janitor in Building 326 at Eastman Kodak’s campus in Rochester in the early 1980s. For Ms. Ramos, that means cleaning at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., in the present day.

In the 35 years between their jobs as janitors, corporations across America have flocked to a new management theory: Focus on core competence and outsource the rest. The approach has made companies more nimble and more productive, and delivered huge profits for shareholders. It has also fueled inequality and helps explain why many working-class Americans are struggling even in an ostensibly healthy economy.

The $16.60 per hour Ms. Ramos earns as a janitor at Apple works out to about the same in inflation-adjusted terms as what Ms. Evans earned 35 years ago. But that’s where the similarities end.

Ms. Evans was a full-time employee of Kodak. She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to college part time, and a bonus payment every March. When the facility she cleaned was shut down, the company found another job for her: cutting film.

Ms. Ramos is an employee of a contractor that Apple uses to keep its facilities clean. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years, because she can’t afford the lost wages. Going back to school is similarly out of reach. There are certainly no bonuses, nor even a remote possibility of being transferred to some other role at Apple.

Yet the biggest difference between their two experiences is in the opportunities they created. A manager learned that Ms. Evans was taking computer classes while she was working as a janitor and asked her to teach some other employees how to use spreadsheet software to track inventory. When she eventually finished her college degree in 1987, she was promoted to a professional-track job in information technology.

Less than a decade later, Ms. Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company, and she has had a long career since as a senior executive at other top companies. Ms. Ramos sees the only advancement possibility as becoming a team leader keeping tabs on a few other janitors, which pays an extra 50 cents an hour.

They both spent a lot of time cleaning floors. The difference is, for Ms. Ramos, that work is also a ceiling.

Eastman Kodak was one of the technological giants of the 20th century, a dominant seller of film, cameras and other products. It made its founders unfathomably wealthy and created thousands of high-income jobs for executives, engineers and other white-collar professionals. The same is true of Apple today.

But Kodak also created enough working-class jobs to help create two generations of middle-class wealth in Rochester. The Harvard economist Larry Summers has often pointed at this difference, arguing that it helps explain rising inequality and declining social mobility.

“Think about the contrast between George Eastman, who pioneered fundamental innovations in photography, and Steve Jobs,” Mr. Summers wrote in 2014. “While Eastman’s innovations and their dissemination through the Eastman Kodak Co. provided a foundation for a prosperous middle class in Rochester for generations, no comparable impact has been created by Jobs’s innovations” at Apple.

Ms. Evans’s pathway was unusual: Few low-level workers, even in the heyday of postwar American industry, ever made it to the executive ranks of big companies. But when Kodak and similar companies were in their prime, tens of thousands of machine operators, warehouse workers, clerical assistants and the like could count on steady work and good benefits that are much rarer today.

When Apple was seeking permission to build its new headquarters, its consultants projected the company would have 23,400 employees, with an average salary comfortably in the six figures. Thirty years ago, Kodak employed about 60,000 people in Rochester, with average pay and benefits companywide worth $79,000 in today’s dollars.

Part of the wild success of the Silicon Valley giants of today — and what makes their stocks so appealing to investors — has come from their ability to attain huge revenue and profits with relatively few workers.

Apple, Alphabet (parent of Google) and Facebook generated $333 billion of revenue combined last year with 205,000 employees worldwide. In 1993, three of the most successful, technologically oriented companies based in the Northeast — Kodak, IBM and AT&T — needed more than three times as many employees, 675,000, to generate 27 percent less in inflation-adjusted revenue.

The 10 most valuable tech companies have 1.5 million employees, according to calculations by Michael Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute, compared with 2.2 million employed by the 10 biggest industrial companies in 1979. Mr. Mandel, however, notes that today’s tech industry is adding jobs much faster than the industrial companies, which took many decades to reach that scale.

Many of the professional jobs from those companies in the 1980s and ’90s have close parallels today. The high-paying positions setting corporate strategy, developing experimental technologies and shaping marketing campaigns would look similar in either era.

But a generation ago, big companies also more often directly employed people who installed products, moved goods around warehouses, worked as security guards and performed many of the other jobs needed to get products into the hands of consumers.

In part, fewer of these kinds of workers are needed in an era when software plays such a big role. The lines of code that make an iPhone’s camera work can be created once, then instantly transmitted across the globe, whereas each roll of film had to be manufactured and physically shipped. And companies face brutal global competition; if they don’t keep their work force lean, they risk losing to a competitor that does.

But major companies have also chosen to bifurcate their work force, contracting out much of the labor that goes into their products to other companies, which compete by lowering costs. It’s not just janitors and security guards. In Silicon Valley, the people who test operating systems for bugs, review social media posts that may violate guidelines, and screen thousands of job applications are unlikely to receive a paycheck directly from the company they are ultimately working for.

And the phenomenon stretches far beyond Silicon Valley, where companies like Apple are just a particularly extreme example of achieving huge business success with a relatively small employee count. The Federal Express delivery person who brings you a package may well be an independent contractor; many of the people who help banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan service mortgage loans and collect delinquent payments work for contractors; and if you call your employer’s computer help desk, there’s a good chance it will be picked up by someone in another state, or country.

Apple emphasizes that its products generate many jobs beyond those who receive a paycheck from the company directly. The company estimates 1.5 million people work in the “app economy,” building and maintaining the mobile applications used on Apple products. Apple stores in 44 states tend to offer more generous pay and benefits than is standard in the retail industry. And it is growing quickly, including far from its California headquarters, such as with 6,000 jobs in Austin, Tex., at an average salary of $77,000 a year, and many more indirectly through what it says is $50 billion in annual spending to suppliers in the United States.

“We’re responsible for creating over two million jobs in the U.S., across all 50 states,” said an Apple spokesman, “ranging from construction, customer care, retail and engineering to app development, manufacturing, operations and trucking. All Apple employees, whether full time or part time, are eligible for benefits and stock grants. We’re also fortunate to have skilled contractors that contribute to our products and services daily, along with over 9,000 suppliers in every state.”

Perhaps the biggest indictment of the more paternalistic approach taken by an earlier generation of corporate behemoths is that, Kodak, despite having been an early innovator in digital photography, is a shell of its former self. After a bankruptcy and many years of layoffs, the company now has only 2,700 employees in the United States and 6,100 worldwide.

But it is also clear that, across a range of job functions, industries and countries, the shift to a contracting economy has put downward pressure on compensation. Pay for janitors fell by 4 to 7 percent, and for security guards by 8 to 24 percent, in American companies that outsourced, Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Ethan Kaplan of Stockholm University found in a 2010 paper.

These pay cuts appear to be fueling overall inequality. J. Adam Cobb of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Ken-Hou Lin at the University of Texas found that the drop in big companies’ practice of paying relatively high wages to their low- and mid-level workers could have accounted for 20 percent of the wage inequality increase from 1989 to 2014.

The same forces that explain the difference between 1980s Kodak and today’s Apple have big implications not just for every blue-collar employee who punches a timecard, but also for white-collar professionals who swipe a badge.

Phil Harnden was coming out of the Navy in 1970 when he applied for a job at Kodak, and soon was operating a forklift in a warehouse. He made $3 an hour, equivalent to $20 an hour today adjusted for inflation. That is roughly what an entry-level contracting job testing software pays.

The difference between the two gigs, aside from the absence of heavy machinery in Apple’s sleek offices, is the sense of permanence. Mr. Harnden put in 16 years operating forklifts before he left in 1986 to move to Florida. When he returned 10 years later, he was quickly rehired and even kept his seniority benefits.

In interviews, tech industry contractors in Silicon Valley describe a culture of transience. They can end up commuting to a different office park that houses a new company every few months; in many cases 18 months is the maximum a contractor is allowed to spend at one company.

“I would rather have stability,” said Christopher Kohl, 29, who has worked as a contractor at several Silicon Valley companies, including a stint doing quality assurance on Apple Maps. “It’s stressful to find a new job every 12 to 18 months.”

For Silicon Valley’s contracting class, there are reminders large and small of their second-class status. Contractors generally do not receive the stock options that have made some midlevel Silicon Valley workers wealthy over the years, nor the generous paid time off for vacation, illness or the birth of a child. The health insurance plans tend to be stingier than those that the tech giants they serve provide for their direct employees.

The smaller reminders can be just as telling. One former Apple contractor recalled spending months testing a new version of Apple’s operating system. To celebrate the release, the Apple employees they’d worked closely with on the project were invited to a splashy party in San Francisco, while the contractors had beers among themselves in a neighborhood pub.

The compensation these white-collar contractors receive puts them squarely in the middle rungs of workers in the United States, and the most skilled can make six figures (though that doesn’t go far in the hyper-expensive Bay Area housing market). Apple, based on its consultants’ report, expected to be indirectly responsible for nearly 18,000 jobs in Santa Clara County by now at an average pay of about $56,000 a year.

There are some advantages. If they work for one of the companies like Apple or Google that feature a subsidized, high-quality cafeteria, contractors can enjoy the food. They can tell their friends that they work at one of the world’s most admired companies, and enjoy predictable, regular hours. Once in a while, a contractor will be hired into a staff position.

“It’s not evil,” said Pradeep Chauhan, managing partner of OnContracting, a site to help people find tech contracting positions. “They have a job and they’re getting paid. But it’s not ideal. The problem with contracting is, you could walk in one day and they could say, ‘You don’t need to come in tomorrow.’ There is no obligation from the companies.”

And that is the ultimate contrast with the middle-skill, middle-wage jobs of earlier generations of titans — a sense of permanence, of sharing in the long-term success of the company.

“There were times I wasn’t happy with the place,” Mr. Harnden said of his Kodak years. “But it was a great company to work for and gave me a good living for a long time.”

When an automaker needs a supplier of transmissions for its cars, it doesn’t just hold an auction and buy from the lowest bidder. It enters a long-term relationship with the supplier it believes will provide the best quality and price over time. The company’s very future is at stake — nobody wants to buy a car that can’t reliably shift into first gear.

But when that same automaker needs some staplers for the office supply cabinet, it is more likely to seek out the lowest price it can get, pretty much indifferent to the identity of the seller.

Labor exists on a similar continuum.

The right product engineer or marketing executive can mean the difference between success or failure, and companies tend to hire such people as full-time employees and as part of a long-term relationship — something like the transmission supplier. What has changed in the last generation is that companies today view more and more of the labor it takes to produce their goods and services as akin to staplers: something to be procured at the time and place needed for the lowest price possible.

There is plenty of logic behind the idea that companies should focus on their core competence and outsource the rest. By this logic, Apple executives should focus on building great phones and computers, not hiring and overseeing janitors. And companies should outsource work when the need for staff is lumpy, such as for software companies that may need dozens of quality-assurance testers ahead of a major release but not once the product is out.

There’s no inherent reason that work done through a contractor should involve lower compensation than the same work done under direct employment. Sometimes it goes in the other direction; when a company hires a law firm, it is basically contracting out legal work, yet lawyers at a firm tend to be paid better than in-house counsel.

But as more companies have outsourced more functions over more time, a strong body of evidence is emerging that it’s not just about efficiency. It seems to be a way for big companies to reduce compensation costs.

Firms in the United States are legally required to offer the same health insurance options and 401(k) match to all employees — meaning if those programs are made extra generous to attract top engineers, a company that doesn’t outsource will have to pay them for everyone.

More broadly, there are a whole set of social pressures and worries about morale that encourage companies to be more generous with pay and benefits for employees who are on the same payroll.

“There was an overriding concern about equity,” said Mr. Cobb, the Wharton professor. “Firms would try to set pay so that the gap between the security guard or administrative assistant and senior V.P. wasn’t as great as you might expect, essentially by paying lower- and middle-skill workers more than they were probably worth on the market.”

Linda DiStefano applied for a secretarial job at Kodak during Easter week of her senior year in high school in 1968, and was hired to start immediately after her graduation for $87.50 a week, today’s equivalent of $32,000 a year. She put in four decades at the company, first as a secretary, then helped administer corporate travel and other projects.

“I helped put on the dinners for the board of directors, which in retrospect someone of my grade shouldn’t have been doing,” she said. “But I had a series of managers who trusted me.”

It bought her a house off Lake Avenue, a new car every few years and occasional long-distance trips to Motown reunion concerts. When her department was abolished in 2008, the travel bookings contracted out, she was making $20 an hour. The best job she could find was as a pharmacy technician at a grocery store for $8.50 an hour.

As you drive around Rochester, the role of Eastman Kodak in the city is evident everywhere, in the Kodak Tower that looms over the center of town, in the Eastman Theater on Main Street, and in the hulking buildings and empty parking lots of the manufacturing center known as Kodak Park.

In reading the company’s old annual reports, you get a sense that its executives thought of the jobs created and the wages paid as a source of pride and achievement. On the first page of most years’ annual reports was an accounting of how many employees the company had in the United States and worldwide, and the total pay and benefits they received.

Apple, with a spaceship-like campus about to open, looms large over Cupertino in its own way, accounting for something like 40 percent of the jobs in the city, and investing $70 million in local environmental and infrastructure upgrades. It is no middle-class enclave; the median home price is $1.9 million.

“We definitely feel a sense of pride to be the home of Apple,” said Savita Vaidhyanathan, the mayor of Cupertino. “But they consider themselves a global company, not necessarily a Cupertino company.” She said she has never met Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive. “We would have a hard time getting an audience with anybody beyond upper-middle management,” she said.

Ms. Ramos, the Apple janitor, lives down the road in San Jose. She pays $2,300 monthly for a two-bedroom apartment where she and her four children live. Before overtime and taxes, her $16.60 an hour works out to $34,520 a year. Her rent alone is $27,600 a year, leaving less than $600 a month once the rent is paid. Overtime, in addition to the wages from one of her teenage children who works part time at a grocery store, helps make the math work, though always tenuously.

She works from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. On days when one of the other cleaners doesn’t show up, she may get a few extra hours, which is great for the overtime pay, but it means even less sleep before it is time to take her children to school.

A 60-cent-an-hour raise this year negotiated by her union, the SEIU United Service Workers West, helped. Kodak in its prime was not unionized, though in that era when organized labor was more powerful over all, managers deliberately kept wages high to try to prevent the company’s workers from forming one.

There is little chance for building connections at Apple. “Everyone is doing their own thing and has their own assignment, and we don’t see each other outside of work,” said Ms. Ramos in Spanish.

Ms. Evans, who was a Kodak janitor in the early 1980s before her rise to executive there and at other leading firms like Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, recalls a different experience.

“One thing about Eastman Kodak is they believed in their people,” said Ms. Evans, now chief information officer at Mercer, the human resources consulting giant. “It was like a family. You always had someone willing to help open a door if you demonstrated that you were willing to commit to growing your skills and become an asset that was valuable for the company.”

The shift is profound. “I look at the big tech companies, and they practice a 21st-century form of welfare capitalism, with foosball tables and free sushi and all that,” Rick Wartzman, senior adviser at the Drucker Institute and author of “The End of Loyalty,” said. “But it’s for a relatively few folks. It’s great if you’re a software engineer. If you’re educated, you’re in command.”

But in the 21st-century economy, many millions of workers find themselves excluded from that select group. Rather than being treated as assets that companies seek to invest in, they have become costs to be minimized.

Correction: Sept. 10, 2017

An Upshot article last Sunday about how an increase in outsourcing at large companies has fueled economic inequality misstated a measure of Apple’s job creation compared with Kodak’s decades ago. Apple has created tens of thousands of working-class jobs; it has not fallen short of matching Kodak in that regard. The article also misstated the amount of a wage increase that Marta Ramos, a janitor at Apple, received this year. Her raise was 60 cents an hour, to $16.60 hourly. It was not a dollar-an-hour raise.

  • Productivity
    • Workforce Reorganization
      • High vs Low Skill
  • Workforce
    • Inequality
    • Wages/Income

Whats Driving Job Growth in Industrial America?

AI Summary. Manufacturing and mining employment has rebounded after losing over 100,000 jobs, though it remains below peak levels, with rising commodity prices rather than policy shifts driving mining hiring. A decline in the trade-weighted dollar, attributed partly to stronger European and Asian economies and US political gridlock, has made American goods cheaper abroad.

Karl Russell New York Times
Date Posted:
September 3, 2017
Is Database:
Database

Since President Trump’s inauguration, job growth in industrial America has been influenced by several factors, including a trade-weighted dollar decline that benefits manufacturers and exporters.

What is driving the rebound in manufacturing and mining jobs?

Core argument: Manufacturing and mining employment is rebounding after the sectors shed over 100,000 jobs in 2016, though payrolls remain below their peak levels.

Since President Trump's inauguration, job growth in industrial America has been influenced by several factors, including a trade-weighted dollar decline that benefits manufacturers and exporters. After losing over 100,000 jobs in 2016, manufacturing and mining employment is rebounding, though still below peak levels. Rising commodity prices, rather than policy shifts, have driven hiring in the mining sector, stabilizing oil industry employment and boosting activity in metals like gold and copper. The dollar's drop, partly due to stronger European and Asian economies and U.S. political gridlock, has made American goods cheaper abroad, aiding companies like Caterpillar. Despite lifting a federal hiring freeze, federal employment declined in 2017 due to proposed budget cuts, while state and local government hiring remained stable. These dynamics underscore the complex interplay between currency fluctuations, commodity prices, and policy decisions in shaping industrial job growth.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Manufacturing and mining employment is rebounding after the sectors shed over 100,000 jobs in 2016, though payrolls remain below their peak levels.
  2. Rising commodity prices, rather than policy shifts, have driven mining-sector hiring, stabilizing oil industry employment and boosting activity in metals including gold and copper.
  3. The trade-weighted dollar's decline, attributed partly to stronger European and Asian economies and U.S. political gridlock, has made American goods cheaper abroad, aiding exporters such as Caterpillar.

Karl Russell and Nelson Schwartz, "What’s Driving Job Growth in Industrial America?,"New York Times, September 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/01/business/economy/manufacturing-trump-jobs.html

What’s Driving Job Growth in Industrial America?

President Trump campaigned on reviving the kinds of jobs associated with the industrial age — work done in factories, coal mines and oil fields.

Mr. Trump has called for expanding drilling on federal lands, while loosening regulations to help manufacturers. And since he took office, hiring has indeed ticked upward in these sectors — but is there any connection?

After a tough 2016 that saw the loss of more than 100,000 jobs, employment in manufacturing and mining (which includes oil and gas drilling) is rebounding. Still, there is plenty of catching up to do — both sectors are well below peak employment levels in recent years.

Whats Driving Job Growth in Industrial America?: Extended Excerpt Image 1


Mr. Trump has claimed credit for overall employment gains in recent months, but in the mining sector, the jump in hiring has had much more to do with rising commodity prices than any policy shift in Washington. After plunging in late 2014 and throughout 2015, energy prices have somewhat recovered. That has helped stabilize employment in the oil industry. Meanwhile, surging prices for metals like gold and copper are spurring activity in the mining sector.

Whats Driving Job Growth in Industrial America?: Extended Excerpt Image 2


In April, Mr. Trump lifted the hiring freeze he had imposed soon after taking office in January, but federal payrolls remain under pressure. The White House has proposed budget cuts at many federal agencies, and federal employment declined in 2017 compared with gains in past years. On the other hand, hiring has been stable on the state level while local governments have been adding workers.

Whats Driving Job Growth in Industrial America?: Extended Excerpt Image 3


As major exporters who are dependent on overseas customers for a big part of their sales, manufacturers often find themselves at the mercy of the dollar. When the dollar surged in 2016, American-made equipment was effectively more expensive for foreign buyers. This year’s drop, on the other hand, is a boon for manufacturers as well as for big American companies who draw a big portion of their sales from overseas, like Caterpillar and McDonald’s.

Whats Driving Job Growth in Industrial America?: Extended Excerpt Image 4


Why is the dollar down? Some of it has to do with the relative strength of other economies in Europe and Asia, which has the effect of drawing investment away from the United States. But political gridlock in Washington — and the fear that efforts to cut taxes or spend more on infrastructure will fail — has also cut expectations for future growth, and in turn pushed the dollar lower.

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Monday, September 4, 2017

Then and Now: The Big Shift at Work

AI Summary. The share of U.S. workers reporting excessive hours rose from 6% in 1973 to 26% in 2016, employer-sponsored health insurance coverage fell from 97% in 1980 to 61% in 2016, and private-sector union membership dropped from 16.8% in 1983 to 6.4% in 2016. Contingent work arrangements, which often lack benefits, grew from 10% to 15.8%.

Lauren Weber Wall Street Journal
Date Posted:
September 4, 2017
Is Database:
Database

Full-time employment in the US provides less stability for workers. Excessive hours rose from 6% in 1973 to 26% in 2016. Employer-sponsored health insurance fell from 97% in 1980 to 61% in 2016.

How have U.S. work hours, benefits, and union membership changed over decades?

Core argument: The share of U.S. workers with employer-sponsored health insurance fell from 97% in 1980 to 61% in 2016, and only 12% of those with single coverage pay no premium.

The stability once associated with full-time employment in the U.S. has diminished significantly. In 1973, only 6% of Americans reported working excessive hours, but by 2016, this figure rose to 26%. The share of workers with employer-sponsored health insurance dropped from 97% in 1980 to 61% in 2016, with only 12% of single coverage workers paying no premium. Union membership in the private sector fell from 16.8% in 1983 to 6.4% in 2016, reducing workers' bargaining power. Meanwhile, contingent work arrangements increased from 10% in 1995 to 15.8% in 2015, often lacking benefits. Despite more benefits for work-life balance, the share of economic output going to workers is shrinking as companies prioritize shareholder returns, with investors receiving three times the payout compared to 30 years ago.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The share of U.S. workers with employer-sponsored health insurance fell from 97% in 1980 to 61% in 2016, and only 12% of those with single coverage pay no premium.
  2. Americans reporting excessive work hours rose from 6% in 1973 to 26% in 2016, while contingent work arrangements, which often lack benefits, grew from 10% in 1995 to 15.8% in 2015.
  3. Private-sector union membership dropped from 16.8% in 1983 to 6.4% in 2016, reducing workers' bargaining power, while the share of economic output going to workers shrinks and investors receive three times the payout of 30 years ago.

Lauren Weber and Stephanie Stamm, "Then and Now: The Big Shift at Work," Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/graphics/american-workplace-then-and-now/ce

Then and Now: The Big Shift at Work: Extended Excerpt Image 1


A couple generations ago, workers in the U.S. could expect a 9-to-5 schedule, retirement benefits, generous health insurance and a sense that they could spend years, even decades, at a single company. Today, workers have more flexibility over how they do their jobs and more control over what they do. But the safety net that once came with full-time work has frayed.

THE U.S. WORKFORCE

Work Intensity Then

The workday is getting longer. In 1973, 6% of Americans complained of working excessive hours, according to a report based on government data.

In 2016, 26% of workers said they usually worked more than 48 hours a week.

In 1973, 7% said they had difficulty completing their work in the time allotted.

In 2016, halfof U.S. workers said they worked during their free time at least occasionally.

Work is demanding, too. Two-thirds of American workers say their jobs require them to spend at least half of their time working at high speeds or meeting tight deadlines.

In 1980, 97% of full-time workers at large and medium-size companies received health insurance through their employers. Most of them didn’t pay a dime for it.

72% of workers with single coverage paid no premium.

51% of workers with family coverage paid no premium.

In 2016, 61% of all workers, full-time and part-time, at large companies had employer-sponsored health insurance.

Counting small companies, which are less likely to offer insurance, that share drops to 55%.

Few employers paid the full cost of the insurance: 12% of those with single coverage paid no premium in 2016.
3% of those with family coverage paid no premium.

Even though many people report working long hours to handle increased workloads, employers are providing more benefits that aid work-life balance.

In 1979, 56% of full-time workers at medium and large companies received paid days off to treat an illness or injury.

In 2016, 76% of all full-time workers received paid days off to treat an illness or injury.
In 1995, 2% of full-time workers at medium and large companies had access to paid parental leave.
In 2016, 16% of all full-time workers had access to paid parental leave.
Workers also have more say over when and where they work. In 1995, 2% employees were allowed to work remotely.
By 2016, 8% were. The Society for Human Resource Management estimates that number to be much higher.

Before the 1980s, pensions were the most common form of employer-sponsored retirement plan. In 1979, 38% of all private-sector workers participated in a pension plan, with their employers guaranteeing a preset monthly payout to retirees.

Just 13% of private-sector workers had pension plans in 2014.
In 1979, 17% of workers had 401(k) accounts.
That rose to 45% with 401(k) plans in 2014.
Today, more private-sector workers have access to an employer-sponsored plan of some kind: 66% in 2017...
...compared with 57% in 2003.

The changes in the workplace have coincided with a shifting relationship between employers and their workers.

The share of Americans represented by unions has shrunk, meaning workers have less bargaining power to maintain generous benefits and job security.

In 1983, 16.8% of private-sector workers belonged to unions.
In 2016, 6.4% of private-sector workers belonged to unions.
The proportion of Americans working as temps or independent contractors, meanwhile, is on the rise. These roles often come without retirement or health benefits. In 1995, 10% of U.S. workers were in these “contingent” arrangements.
By 2015, 15.8% were.

Workers now get a smaller piece of the economic pie in the form of wages and benefits than they once did

Economists and management experts say CEOs and boards today put shareholders’ concerns ahead of employee needs. Driving up the stock price - often by cutting costs - and distributing earnings through dividends and share buybacks keeps investors happy.

The biggest share of companies’ output still goes to workers, but that share is shrinking as companies spend less on both employee compensation and capital investment. Meanwhile, investors are getting three times the payout they did 30 years ago.

Then and Now: The Big Shift at Work: Extended Excerpt Image 2


As automation replaces or transforms many jobs, employers and workers may come to depend on each other even less. Estimates vary, but some experts say that 50% of the tasks workers do in today’s global economy could be automated using technology that already exists.

Sources:

Bureau of Labor Statisics (health insurance, work-life balance, retirement, unions; data is for private-sector workers); Rand Corp., University of Michigan and University of Massachusetts (work intensity); Kaiser Family Foundation (health insurance; data includes a small share of nonfederal public employers); Employee Benefit Research Institute (retirement); Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger (work relationship); Simcha Barkai (shareholder capitalism); McKinsey Global Institute (future of work)Network

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