The Collapse of the Middle-Class Job

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/news/2016/05/09/collapse-middle-class-job/

New research is beginning to confirm the permanent nature of middle-income job loss. Based on analysis that one reviewer calls “some of the most important work done by economists in the last twenty years,” a National Bureau of Economic Research study found that national employment levels have fallen in U.S. industries that are vulnerable to import competition, without offsetting job gains in other industries. Even the Wall Street Journal admits that “many middle-wage occupations, those with average earnings between $32,000 and $53,000, have collapsed.”

High-salaried jobs in technology still exist, but they’re available to fewer people as machines become smarter. Netflix, for example, serves 57 million customers with less than 2,200 employees, who have a median salary of $180,000. Google is worth $370 billion but employs only about 55,000 workers (50 years ago AT&T was worth less in today’s dollars but employed about 750,000 workers). Facebook’s messaging application WhatsApp has 55 employees serving 450 million customers.

As jobs are downsized, profits are maximized. Apple makes over $500,000 per employee; Facebook and Google are both over $300,000; Exxon and Phillips 66 are both well over $250,000; Merck and Allergan and Pfizer are all significantly over $100,000. Just 25 years ago GM, Ford, and Chrysler generated a combined $36 billion in revenue while employing over 1,000,000 workers. Today Apple, Facebook, and Google generate over a trillion dollars in revenue with 137,000 workers.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have estimated that half of the labor decline in this century is due to the replacement of people with computers and software. Oxford University researchers forecasted that half of all jobs will be performed by machine by the 2030s.

[Sherman A1]

1. Thanks for Posting!

This is an incredibly important article on the state of things and a look at the do more with less world.

[Baobab]

7. Hollowing out of the income curve will leave many people with nowhere to go in society

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond

[raven mad]

2. And try it when there are two of you,

and still come up under near-poverty level. I'm almost glad to have a rather short life expectancy, and worry for my daughters and son and my grandkids.

The far-right wants badly to take every one of us back to the Overlord/Sycophant/Serve level with a few oligarchs, emperors, and gawds (them). Hence lack of unions, decent schools and available education.

I save this; thank you!!!

[reformist2]

3. Guaranteed income. When there aren't enough jobs to go around, this is the only solution.

For all the talk about minimum wage, this doesn't really address the fundamental problem. Whether jobs are $15, $12, or $9 an hour, there simply aren't enough jobs to go around in a roboticized, computerized economy.

"Guaranteed Income" for all citizens, also called "Basic Income", really is the way to go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Difference_from_guaranteed_income

[Punx]

6. Requires the Psychopaths to let go

And massive change in the average person's view of things here in merica. After all, if you don't work you're just a "lazy" "worthless" person, a "taker" in the eyes of many.

It's going to take a lot of work, but I really think it is a good answer to the situation where machines get to the point that most labor is unneeded.

It always comes back to how "wealth" should be distributed.

[Baobab]

8. No, they will engage in economic dumping, basically forcing poor people to move elsewhere

Low lying islands and coastal areas will likely be inundated with salt water and abandoned and those who have fallen off the economic map who are fleeing debt in the grid connected state may try move there and try to evade the bounty hunters, building fortified structures that can endure the superstorms.. maybe coastal cities will remain populated - more substantial buildings built now will remain connected by heliports and boats.

[Nay]

4. Okay -- NOW can we punch people who tell us to just get some more education and

we'll be fine???? I want that BS meme to die for good.

[Punx]

5. Fine by me

Someone I know has 4, count them 4 degrees including a Masters in a science discipline and hasn't been able to find work that pays half of what she used to make after her job was sent to China. Companies will often put her through three or more interviews before saying "no thank you".

In the 90's she was hired for an engineering job after a phone interview from a hospital where she had just given birth hours earlier.

Think of the difference here, a mother with a new born was hired, sight unseen, the hiring company knowing full well that she had just given birth and was willing to wait 8 weeks for her to start.

Times have changed, and not for the better.

[Baobab]

9. No, thats fake, its all about cutting wages.

Mode Four and its ilk are all about maximizing the value in the supply chains - creating a race to the bottom.

[fasttense]

10. This is the reason the middle class is now less than half of the US population

The middle class alone in the US use to make up a majority. But with all the jobs that disappeared in 2008 and came back as minimum wage jobs, the poor have grown and the middle class has dwindled.

Soon the poor will be the majority. Thanks capitalism.