Tag Archives: jobs

Advantage of a tiny house: you can drive it around and unload it when needed

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The tiny house has this advantage over traditional homes: you can put it on a truck and move it when needed.

Sitting on an unsaleable trailer, Kirsten Shaw and her husband decided to do something radical: following a growing trend in the U.S., they eschewed the Calgary-standard McMansion and instead started to build a portable tiny house. Mrs. Shaw, who works in a Calgary health food store, and her husband, a contractor, are constructing their new home paycheque by paycheque. When it’s complete sometime next year, the fort-like dwelling will take up about 200 square feet. Along with a converted van, that’s where the family of three (which swells to six when her husband’s children from a previous marriage join in) plan to live and travel. The Post’s Jen Gerson spoke with Mrs. Shaw in this edited transcript…

It seems like this tiny houses have become more popular, do you think that has anything to do with what you just described, that people aren’t really getting ahead?

It could be for us it’s that I guess I really have taken a good long look at the fact that you’re very much in a relationship with the government that you’re very vulnerable…If there was an oil crisis and the food stopped getting trained in and trucked in here well we can’t really grow things here in Calgary.

It’s more like giving us the security in that we have the power to do what we need to do to survive as a family and always make sure we’re provided for. If that means picking up and driving somewhere where food grows in the southern states or even out on the islands we can do that and not have to worry.

Here is the twist to this downsizing story: the family is worried that they will need to be more mobile in order to respond to changing economic conditions. Owning a home ties you down too much; not only does it require a much larger financial commitment, it takes more time to move since this involves selling the home, finding another place to live, and doing something with all the stuff one can accumulate in an average new home of over 2,000 square feet. This would seem to match up with some commentary that part of the problems with the recent recession is that possible employees can’t easily go to where the jobs are because they are tied down by underwater homes.

Perhaps we could envision a future where more workers have to be mobile, both to cut expenses but also in order to find temporary work…not exactly the typical image of the American (or Canadian) Dream.

Lack of good data on grad students who go into nonacademic jobs

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I was just asked about this recently so I was interested to see this story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about efforts to get better data about graduate students who go on to nonacademic careers:

The Council of Graduate Schools published a wider-scoped study this year. “Pathways Through Graduate School and Into Careers” focuses on the transition from graduate school to job. Its findings, based on consultation with students, deans, and employers, are now resonating in an academic culture that remains fixated on the tenure-track outcome.

The council’s study found that professors don’t talk enough to their graduate students about possible jobs outside of academe, even though such nonfaculty positions are “of interest to students.” That lack of guidance is particularly egregious in light of where graduate students actually end up: About half of new Ph.D.’s get their first jobs outside of academe, “in business, government, or nonprofit jobs,” the council’s report said.

The CGS study included a survey but the results have not been published. Incredibly, there has been no significant survey of graduate-student career outcomes since Nerad and Cerny’s [a 1999 study]—and they limited their sample to Ph.D.’s who had received their degrees nearly 30 years ago now.

So it’s big news that the Scholarly Communication Institute is conducting a new survey of former graduate students who have (or are building) careers outside the professoriate—a career category now commonly called alternative academic, or “alt-ac.” (You can tell how embedded an idea has become when it gets a handle as brief as that.)

You would think there would be more data on this topic but since graduate schools themselves may not have a great interest in this information, it takes some other group or interested party to pull it all together.

I know in reports like these graduate school faculty tend to take a beating because they don’t talk enough about nonacademic options. While they should know something about the topic and perhaps in the future they can point their students to this new survey and database, how much could they really know about the nonacademic world? They often face a lot of pressure to keep up in their own settings, let alone find out about areas that their schools and departments wouldn’t really reward them for. Perhaps there would be some way to introduce incentives to the system that could help reward faculty for also talking about life outside academia? I wonder how many departments in certain subjects would feel like failures if half their graduates ended up in nonacademic jobs…this is not conducive to wanting to share more information with students.

Employers to applicants: not being a member of Facebook means you are suspicious

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Beware job applicants: not having a Facebook account could cast suspicion on you.

On a more tangible level, Forbes.com reports that human resources departments across the country are becoming more wary of young job candidates who don’t use the site.

The common concern among bosses is that a lack of Facebook could mean the applicant’s account could be so full of red flags that it had to be deleted…

It points out that Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people and an unborn child and wounding 58 others at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and Breivik, who murdered  77 people with a car bomb and mass shooting, did not use Facebook and had small online footprints…

And this is what the argument boils down to: It’s the suspicion that not being on Facebook, which has become so normal among young adults, is a sign that you’re abnormal and dysfunctional, or even dangerous, ways.

Facebook is the new normal, but the idea that people not on Facebook are necessarily suspicious is a gross overgeneralization, particularly when tied to just two tragedies. I can imagine a variety of good reasons for being a nonuser that doesn’t indicate one is a psychopath.

The interest employers have in Facebook certainly is interesting. I blogged a while back about some employers wanting the password of applicants so they could look over their profiles. How does looking at a profile stack up against other ways of getting information such as reading a resume, doing a background check, and checking references?

 

Should we care that Apple pays its retail store employees relatively little money?

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The New York Times has a long piece about what Apple pays its retail store workers. Here are some of the details:

About 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in this country work in Apple Stores, as members of the service economy, and many of them earn about $25,000 a year. They work inside the world’s fastest growing industry, for the most valuable company, run by one of the country’s most richly compensated chief executives, Tim Cook. Last year, he received stock grants, which vest over a 10-year period, that at today’s share price would be worth more than $570 million.

And though Apple is unparalleled as a retailer, when it comes to its lowliest workers, the company is a reflection of the technology industry as a whole…

“In the service sector, companies provide a little bit of training and hope their employees leave after a few years,” says Arne L. Kalleberg, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina. “Especially now, given the number of college kids willing to work for low wages.”

By the standards of retailing, Apple offers above average pay — well above the minimum wage of $7.25 and better than the Gap, though slightly less than Lululemon, the yoga and athletic apparel chain, where sales staff earn about $12 an hour. The company also offers very good benefits for a retailer, including health care, 401(k) contributions and the chance to buy company stock, as well as Apple products, at a discount…

“It’s interesting to ask why we find it offensive that Wal-Mart pays a single mother $9 an hour, but we don’t find it offensive that Apple pays a young man $12 an hour,” Mr. Osterman said. “For each company, the logic is the same — there is a line of people eager to take the job. In effect, we’re saying that our value judgments depend on the circumstances of the employee, not just supply and demand of the labor market.”

I find two things very interesting from the quoted sections above:

1. This is a reminder that we now live in the era of the service economy. While Apple may generate tremendous profits and have a really high stock price, the majority of its jobs are low wage. This is what our economy looks like today: many jobs are relatively low-trust and low-paying and not everyone will have an opportunity to parlay it into a better, more fulfilling job. One could criticize Apple for such policies but they are hardly the only company doing this and it appears to be effective for generating profits.

2. The difference in perception between Apple and Walmart is indeed intriguing. One company has a better image than the other. Both rely on similar methods as they look for ways to make their products in a more cost effective way (though they aren’t exactly operating in the same price levels in the market – it will be some time before we see Apple computers sold at Walmart), have a number of jobs overseas (or at least their suppliers do), and are looking for ways to maximize their market share. It would be interesting to know if any of the recent reports about Apple employees in China (see this NYT story about Foxconn) has influenced people’s perceptions of Apple as well as altered their consumption habits.

This story got me thinking: what would happen if US Apple retail store workers decided to unionize and demanded better wages (perhaps even a living wage)? Apparently there is an effort underway to unionize the stores:

“People have definitely listed [pay] as a top issue,” said Moll, who started the Apple Retail Workers Union in an attempt to unionize U.S. store workers. “Because of our low wages we often can’t afford to buy the technology that we sell.”

Would Apple strongly fight these efforts and if so, how much negative attention would they receive?

Samuel Barber asks what might happen “If Mayors Ruled the World”

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Richard Florida interviews Samuel Barber about his forthcoming book titled If Mayors Ruled the World. Here is why Barber thinks mayors are increasingly important:

The problem here is that political sovereignty has passed to the economic sector, where global financial capital and multinational corporations exercise an undue influence on both domestic and international affairs. Cities share jurisdiction over the economic resources of the city — where commercial, financial and information capital are concentrated — but that jurisdiction is limited by the emerging sovereignty of economics over politics.

Where the city is able to exercise control of economic resources it must live with the superior jurisdiction of nation-states, who may interdict cities trying to collaborate across borders. A city boycotting goods made by child labor in a developing country may be held in violation of the WTO’s fair trade rules (which bar certain kinds of boycotts); or a city trying to control guns may be ruled in violation of the right to bear arms, as happened recently when the Supreme Court invalidated the District of Columbia’s gun control rules…

What I want to suggest is that these myriad global networks, and the inherent disposition of cities to cooperate, exemplify the deep capacity of cities to work together across borders, and justify my claim that a global “parliament of mayors” could achieve a good deal of concord voluntarily both on common policies and on common actions. This is what the networks are already doing, and what a formalization of the process could achieve. The key is a “soft” bottom-up approach to cooperation organized around “glocality” rather than a top-down “legal mandate” approach of the kind we associate with (and fear from) “world government.”…

While the details of a parliament of mayors would be worked out at an inaugural convening of interested cities, I propose some guidelines that could be considered. That there be three parliaments/audiaments per annum, each in a different (voluntary) city, and each representing 300 cities chosen by lot from a list of all cities wishing to attend. This would allow up to 900 cities per annum to participate. Given that all common actions would be voluntary.

The starting point for this conversation is the growing power, particularly economic, of the top global cities. While these cities operate within nation-states, they have economies and populations that rival nations.

Several thoughts about this:

1. While national leaders also talk about the economy and jobs, it seems like mayors may have more direct influence on bringing jobs to their domain. I would guess that overall, mayors are more pro-business and are always looking to attract top corporations and new firms. Perhaps mayors have to be more pragmatic about jobs and business climate as their connections to the business interests in their city are very important.

2. Let’s say Barber’s ideas about a “parliament of mayors” come to pass. What might actually come out of this? Mayors in the largest cities already meet and try to share best practices. Perhaps Barber thinks the mayors can forge stronger economic ties between their respective cities? Perhaps mayors can band together to put pressure on national governments?

3. I would be interested to know how the political clout of mayors around the world compares. Certain mayors in the United States are well-known but is this primarily because of the size of the cities in which they were elected or are their dynamic movers and shakers from smaller cities as well. Are mayors in different parts of the world more important or less important compared to US mayors? I could imagine that in countries with weaker governments mayors might have more relative influence.

Sociologist argues that there aren’t as many high-paying high-tech jobs as people think

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While commentators suggest that college students should pursue high-tech careers, a sociologist argues that there aren’t as many jobs in this sector as people think:

Finally, it is a big mistake to think that the tech sector is a panacea for the jobs crisis. University of Michigan professor of business and sociology Gerald Davis has examined the data and found that the job-producing high-tech’s potential is consistently overplayed.

“Although the handful of teen billionaires who manage to cash in on the latest app may suggest otherwise, surprisingly few people actually work in the high-visibility success stories of the tech economy,” Davis writes in an article to be presented at the American Sociological Association meeting. “The combined global workforces of Google (32,467), Apple (63,300), Facebook (3000), Microsoft (90,000), Cisco (71,825), and Amazon.com (56,200) — 316,792 as of the end of 2011 — are smaller than the U.S. workforce of [grocery chain] Kroger (339,000). Notably, a recent survey of college graduates under 40 found than one in five listed Google as their most preferred employer, followed by Apple and Facebook. They might as well have chosen the NBA as Facebook, given the firm’s minuscule employment, and Apple’s recent surge in net jobs is almost entirely attributable to the roll-out of its retail stores, where most of its current employees work. The Computer and Electronic Products industry has seen a loss of 750,000 jobs since 2000 as production has been almost universally offshored. But even the Information Services sector, which includes telecommunications, broadcasting, publishing and data processing, shed over one million jobs during the same period.”

It sounds like aspirations and the number of available jobs don’t line up. Some could argue that there are plenty of smaller high-tech firms and start-ups along with plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurship but I’m guessing plenty of young adults would want to work for established (and cool!) companies.

Others have argued that people in or going to college should look at what jobs are going to popular in the future, presumably to avoid industries that are losing jobs. But what commentator would discourage young people from going into the high-tech sector even though they would quickly recommend steering clear of liberal arts degrees?

Even in economic crisis people are still drawn to New York City

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Even in the midst of tough economic times, plenty of people are still drawn to New York City:

So what is it that lures us here and keeps us beholden? Recently, the opportunity arguments have been harder to sustain. In March of last year, the unemployment rate in the city stood at 8.6 percent; 12 months later it jumped to 9.8 percent. Nationally, the unemployment rate has declined during the past year, to 8.1 percent in April.

But the past few years, defined by economic challenges, have seemed only to burnish the city’s appeal. An analysis of American Community Survey data by Susan Weber-Stoger of the Queens College Department of Sociology reveals that more people moved to New York City (over 223,000 of them a year on average) after the financial crisis in 2008 and through 2010 than did from 2005 to 2007, an increase of 10 percent.

Simultaneously, the number of people who have left the city since the recession decreased by 25 percent. Of those who have come, most have been from 25 to 34 years old, more than two-thirds of them with college or graduate degrees. More than a third of those who’ve arrived have come from abroad.

When I discussed some of these numbers with Miriam Greenberg, a sociologist who has written extensively about the branding of New York, she cited the highly strategized efforts the current mayoral administration has made to sell the city to the world. This may explain, in some sense, why people have come, but it doesn’t tell us why they remain, with their Zipcar memberships and disillusions.

If I had to venture a guess why this is the case, I might make this argument: New York City (and other big cities) are viewed as places where opportunities are. Even if the unemployment rate is higher (and I doubt many people checked before going there), the assumption is that there are more jobs to be had and there is a broader range of jobs available (particularly compared to smaller cities or more rural areas). Therefore, the potential for a good job is higher. This is process that is not unique to the United States; the incredible rates of urbanization around the world are also partly due to perceptions that cities may be the only places where jobs are available.

We could also flip this question around: should cities try to attract more people if there are not enough jobs for everyone? Greenberg suggests that the city has effectively marketed itself but in the long run, is this a sustainable strategy if there are not jobs (and other needs such as housing) for everyone who comes?

When looking at the minimum wage, should we consider whether a poorly paying job is better than no job?

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I ran into an argument about whether the minimum wage should be raised in the United States and it got me thinking about the reasons behind the argument for raising it. To start, here is some of the debate:

One of the harshest realities of America’s slow economic recovery — and there are many — is the fact in spite of modest job growth, pay for workers is falling. Year over year, average inflation adjusted wages have dropped by 0.6 percent for all private sector employees. They’re down a full 1 percent for non-supervisors — your retail salespeople, your shop floor factory workers, your cashiers. In other words, even as the overall employment picture has improved in fits and starts, the working poor are getting poorer.

Some believe this is a sign of the recovery’s weakness, and today the National Employment Law Project used it as a rallying point to call for a higher minimum wage. According to their analysis, which is current through the beginning of 2011, while the bulk of job losses during the recession affected medium wage earners, such as paralegals and nurses, most of the hiring post-recession has been for low-paid service work. Middle class jobs, they argue, have been replaced with poverty wage jobs…

But here’s the alarming part. All of this might simply mean that the same forces that caused wages to stagnate before the recession will make them stagnate after the recession. It’s just another sign that income inequality is here to stay, unless something radical changes that will give working class families a larger slice of the pie. Will raising the minimum wage do that? It might help on the margins, certainly for the 3.8 million workers who earn it.  (I’m not one of those who believes that a higher minimum wage actually kills jobs. This great, short Slate piece from 2004 explains why.) But the vast majority of American workers won’t see much benefit from it. Rather, fixing the wage problem means we need to think about the fundamental problems skewing income growth towards the top, from spiraling CEO pay to an inadequate education system.

Falling wages are taking us back to where we were before the recession. For many workers, that’s not a good place. And there aren’t any easy ways out of it.

Of course, arguments for raising the minimum wage often focus on the idea that it is not enough money to live on. Hence, calls for a living wage that is more closely tied to a more steady standard of living.

But I wonder if there isn’t a bigger issue at work here: the idea that low-paying jobs may not be worth having. In other words, people might be better off without a minimum wage job. The low-paying job may be helpful in securing a new job (you don’t want an unemployment gap in your resume) or moving up but too many of these low-paying jobs pay so little that employees may not be able to do the things they need to do to move up (move to a new area where jobs are more plentiful, own a reliable car to expand job prospects, enroll in classes, etc.). Additionally, a number of these jobs don’t really offer chances for advancement; if they do, it is limited to a small group of workers. So these workers can get trapped in a cycle of low-paying positions that meet some basic needs to survive but never provide the hope to do something better. This is reflected in books like Nickel and Dimed: it is hard enough to do the daily grind, let alone find some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of a better-paying job.

In this sense, making a small adjustment to the minimum wage wouldn’t seem to do much. It might offer a little more money but this is likely eroded quickly by inflation (past and future). What we then need is more jobs that provide a higher standard of living and give more employees the opportunity to move on and up to something better.

(I realize there is a lot more going on here. But I wanted to get at the idea that simply having a job isn’t a guarantee of having the chance to reach the American Dream. Being willing to work doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good outcome. This also reminds me of Katherine Newman’s book No Shame In My Game about the working poor who want to work but can’t access the jobs that would lead to success.)

“A region’s workforce is not defined by its immediate suburbs”

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The Chicago Tribune has a story about “super-commuters” who make the trip between Chicago and St. Louis. While the story seems more intent on putting a face on this growing phenomenon (although the numbers are still relatively low), there is a very interesting quote from a researcher about how we should view jobs and regional economies:

Regardless, said Mitchell Moss, the NYU professor who authored the study, the trend speaks to both the increased flexibility of modern-day workers — “the office” can be almost anyplace — and the challenges facing two-income families in a weak job market: Why uproot your family when your spouse can’t get a job in the new city?

The trend illustrates how the economies of places like St. Louis are increasingly hitched to their neighbors.

“It tells you that there is an inter-regional economic relationship, which is growing between places like St. Louis and Chicago,” Moss said. “A region’s workforce is not defined by its immediate suburbs.”

I’ve written several times about the need for more regional cooperation in the Chicago region between city and suburbs (see this post regarding Mayor Daley and this post about Mayor Emanuel). With limited cooperation, communities can end up fighting over corporations and jobs, whether tax money from a particular municipality should be spent elsewhere, and how best to address regional-level issues like transportation or affordable housing.

What exactly would it mean for Chicago and St. Louis to cooperate? One area could be transportation: I assume both Chicago and St. Louis were on-board for plans to construct a high-speed rail line between the cities. Environmental issues could be another area. For example, both cities rely on interconnected water sources and shipping so common issues could arise (but remember there is a regional fight about Asian carp). But what about business issues? Could they set aside their separate issues to encourage economic development that might benefit both cities? Are there really economic opportunities they could both benefit from in spite of the distance between them?

Unemployment rate by college major

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A January 2012 report titled “Hard Times” from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce looked at earnings by college major. Here are the four main findings of the study:

1. Choice of major substantially affects employment prospects and earnings.

2. People who make technology are better off than people who use technology.

3. In general, majors that are linked to occupations have better employment prospects than majors focused on general skills. But, some occupation specific majors, such as Architecture, were hurt by the recession and fared worse than general skills majors.

4. For many, pursuing a graduate degree may be the best option until the economy recovers. But, not all graduate degrees outperform all BA’s on employment.

This seems to reinforce the recent push for STEM disciplines as well as more vocational-type programs. Here are the unemployment rates by educational degree and for a few college disciplines:

A study published in January from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce finds unemployment among job seekers with no better than a high school diploma at 22.9 percent.

And it doesn’t get any better for high school dropouts, whose unemployment rate sits at 31.5 percent among high school dropouts.

While a college degree gives job seekers a formidable advantage over those without, the study finds not all degrees are created equal and there are a number of factors that prospective students should consider before signing their major. The study cited unemployment rates for recent college graduates with a bachelor’s degree at 8.9 percent.

According to the report, fields in anthropology and archeology  have an unemployment rate of 10.5 percent, philosophy and religious studies are at 10.8 percent, sociology 8.6 percent and journalism is at 7.7 percent.

Given the common discourse you will hear about sociology majors (particularly those that rack up lots of college debt!), I’m happy to see that sociology is slightly above average. The sociology unemployment rate is 8.6% for recent college graduates, 5.4% for experienced college graduates, better than the percentages for political science, economics, English, and philosophy and religious studies.