I wanted to pass this post by David Weaver at RealClearMarkets along. It actually makes two very interesting points:
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics just updated its classification of job titles for the first time in 50 years (!)
- There aren’t many jobs with low educational requirements that aren’t physically demanding
While many jobs are “easy” along one dimension, it is much less common for jobs to be easy along two or more dimensions. This has major implications for policy debates about the retirement and disability programs in the U.S., as well as efforts to prepare younger Americans for the workforce.
Physically demanding jobs often require standing for much of the workday and higher skill jobs often require some minimum level of education. Figure 1 displays the relationship of these two measures using the new BLS data for the 22 major group civilian occupations in the U.S. The figure illustrates the inherent physicality-skill tradeoff that typically characterizes U.S. jobs. Jobs with low physical demands tend to have higher skill requirements.
For example, virtually all workers in a legal profession have minimum education requirements, but are required to stand, on average, for only about 15 percent of the day. At the other extreme, workers in food preparation and serving jobs are required, on average, to stand for 97 percent of the workday, but generally do not have to meet minimum education requirements.
In a slight digression a couple of years back I spent several weeks in Italy during a heatwave performing what was, indeed, a physically demanding job. I was pushing a cart up and down the aisles of a warehouse mapping the locations of shelves and bins. It also required substantial education and skill. Consequently, it was that rara avis a job that was difficult in both dimensions. I suspect that the people I was working with would have been horrified if they had known how old I am—I look a lot younger than I actually am.
I’ve expressed my views before. I see no earthly way that physically demanding jobs with few educational or skill requirements will ever pay a living wage without reducing the number of workers who fit that bill so that ordinary supply and demand pushes their wages up. Furthermore, I think that boosting the wages of such workers by providing some sort of stipend is bad policy—it’s providing a subsidy for companies to pay low wages.
” without reducing the number of workers who fit that bill so that ordinary supply and demand pushes their wages up.”
Ignores tech changes and the productivity changes.
Steve
Could you expand on that, steve? I think that technological change actually aggravates this issue. Said another way, we need low skill but high physical demand jobs less than we used to because of technological change not more.
Hmmm. rara avis?
Maybe. But I would suggest that a guy with a Masters degree in engineering, running up and down stairs to the different levels of a steelmaking shop, in sweltering heat in the summer, and standing all of 5 feet away from a 300 ton ladle of 2900* liquid steel is somewhat demanding. And I’m not sure I’d say people in very high stress jobs, although sitting most of the day, are in the ideal positions for good health. And so on….. But I digress.
But this:
“I see no earthly way that physically demanding jobs with few educational or skill requirements will ever pay a living wage without reducing the number of workers who fit that bill so that ordinary supply and demand pushes their wages up.”
Is most assuredly true. (I don’t know what nonsense steve is thinking of; other than slavish defense of a Democrat political position) We are really talking about immigration policy and border control here. Lots of demanding jobs: pickers and packers in the ag industry; construction (roofers); landscaping etc. BTW – contra you know who, it was recently reported that 63% of recent (last few years) immigrants were unemployed. The balance obviously drawing on the Fed tit. This is simply horrible public policy. A pox on McConnel. A pox on Biden and his progressive masters.
I see a shift of significant proportions in views on higher education. A move to the trades – higher skilled than ag or hospitality – means more physically demanding work. Let’s hope our immigration policy doesn’t destroy the economic attractiveness of the trades.
I’ve been precisely there. Actually, my office was air conditioned—it was 110°F.
Here in Chicago there are now beggars on practically every street corner.
Dave –
I hear you. And I believe you also had an assignment in a rod mill. Undoubtedly as cool as a fall breeze……….
Let me recommend filling sandbags and building bunkers in full chem gear in Saudi in the summer.
It’s really rather sweet to see you guys becoming concerned about lower income workers. Note that while incomes have increased steadily since about 1970 for upper income people they have been pretty stagnant for those at the bottom. Immigration has varied quite a bit during that time but wages stayed flat. That suggests that immigration has not been a primary cause. Changes in technology and policy, corporate and government, which favors businesses over workers are more likely culprits. But has there been any concern about this among conservatives? Not an iota.
Besides which, when did the bottom 10%-20% ever really have a living wage? It meant you could get a (crappy) roof over your head and enough to eat. Certainly, absent govt intervention didnt include health care or anything other than public education.
Anyway, now you guys pretend to care. Nice.
Steve
I have always been concerned about lower income workers. I grew up among lower income workers, their kids were my playmates, and I’ve been a lower income worker. Do you have no other approach to debate than ad hominems?
My main concern is black Americans. With a steady, reliable stream of new immigrants I don’t see a path to prosperity for them. It will not come through government grants or handouts. Those will make a small number of black Americans very rich while leaving the rest behind. For education to be that path they’d need to go to school. Not enough complete high school let alone college.
Baloney. We had a spike in immigration starting in 1965. There was another spike after 1985 and we’re having another one now.
I have posted before on how, in the early 70s, American agricultural workers were thrown out of their jobs by (mostly Mexican) immigrants. That happened first in the Southeast and then in the Pacific Northwest as late as the 1980s. It wasn’t that those were jobs that Americans wouldn’t do; it was because they were jobs that Americans wouldn’t at the dirt poor wages that immigrant workers would accept.
I have also posted on how meatpacking jobs in the upper Midwest went from decent paying jobs that would support a middle class lifestyle to low end job mostly done by immigrants. That has largely happened in the last 30 years.